SECESSION   IN  THEORY,  AS  THE  FRAMERS  OF 
THE  CONSTITUTION  VIEWED  IT. 

SECESSION  AS  PRACTISED  AND  AS  SUSTAINED 
BY  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

SECESSION  AS  ATTEMPTED  BY  THE  CONFED- 
ERATE STATES. 


By 


COL.  ROBERT  BINGHAM, 

Superintendent  of  The  Bingham  School, 

Asheville,  N.  C. 


Annual   Address   of   President,    Ninth   Annual   Session,    State 

Literary  and  Historical  Association,  Raleigh, 

North  Carolina,  October  13,  1908. 


Supplement  to  Minutes. 


Authorities  Quoted  Herein,  and  the  Date  of  the  Publication  of  the  Editions 
from  which  Citations  are  Made  : 

Marshall's  Life  of  Washington,  C.  P.  Wayne.  Philadelphia,  1807. 

Wm.  Rawle's  View  of  the  Constitution,  H.  L.  Carey  &  T.  Lee,  Philadel- 
phia, 1825. 

Spark's  Life  and  Writings  of  Gouvemeur  Morris,  Carey  &  Bowen, 
Boston,  1832. 

Spark's  Writings  of  Washington,  American  Stationers'  Co.,  Boston,  1837. 

The  Papers  of  James  Madison,  J.  &  H.  G.  Langley,  New  York,  1841. 

The  Works  of  Daniel  Webster,  C.  C.  Little  &  Jas.  Brown,  Boston,  185 1. 

The  Elliott  Debates,  J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co..  1861. 

Gentz's  Republic  of  Republics,  4th  Edition,  Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  Bos- 
ton, 1881. 

Larned's  History  for  Ready  Reference,  C.  A.  Nichols  Co.,  Springfield, 
Mass.,  1895. 

Curry's  Southern  States  of  the  American  Union,  Johnson  Pub'g  Co., 
Richmond,  1895. 

Benton's  A  Xotable  Libel  Case,  Chas.  F.  Goodspeed,  Boston,  1904. 

Bledsoe's  Is  Davis  a  Traitor,  The  Hermitage  Press,  Richmond,  Va.,  1907. 

Hunt's  James  Madison  Papers,  C.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1908. 

Hart's  Essentials  in  American  History,  American  Book  Co.,  Copy- 
righted in  1905. 

James  Bryce's  The  American  Commonwealth.  3d  Edition.  The  Mac- 
millan  Co. 

During  the  preparation  of  this  paper  a  number  of  persons  kindly  gave 
useful  information,  and  made  valuable  suggestions,  among  whom  are: 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  of  Boston  ;  the  late  Dr.  Leonard  Woolsey  Bacon  ; 
Rev.  Dr.  R.  F.  Campbell,  of  Asheville,  X.  C. :  Judge  G.  L.  Christian,  of 
Richmond,  Va. ;  Senator  J.  W.  Daniel,  of  Va. ;  President  C.  H.  Denny,  of 
Washington  and  Lee  Univ. ;  Mrs.  Wm.  Dinwiddie,  of  Greenwood,  Va. : 
Miss  Ruth  Early,  of  Lynchburg,  Va. ;  Prof.  J.  H.  Latane,  of  Washington 
and  Lee  Univ. ;  the  late  Gen.  Fitzhugh  Lee  :  Mrs.  M.  J.  Leeds,  of  Xew 
Orleans,  La.:  the  late  Gen.  Dabney  H.  Maury;  John  Rawle,  of  Xatchez, 
Miss. :  Wm.  Brooke  Rawle,  of  Philadelphia,  Penn. :  the  late  Dr.  Wm.  H. 
Ruffner,  of  Lexington.  Va. :  President  Lyon  G  Tyler,  of  William  and 
Mary  College ;  President  Woodrow  Wilson,  of  Princeton  Univ. ;  Dr.  F.  C. 
Woodward,  of  Richmond,  Va. 


^s 


V) 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/secessionintheorOObing 


SECESSION 


When  the  historian  of  the  future  shall  get  the  true  perspective  on  the 
War  Between  the  Sections  in  the  United  States,  ending  with  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  Southern  Confederacy  in  1S65,  the  terms  rebel,  rebellion,  trai- 
tor, treason  must  disappear  in  the  light  of  historic  verities  as  the  true 
and  scientific  historian  shall  develop  and  promulgate  them.  Already  the 
public  prints  have  substituted  CIVIL  WAR,  the  name  of  sober  judgment, 
for  Rebellion,  the  name  of  passion.  Lincoln,  in  his  famous  Thanksgiving 
Proclamation  of  November,  1863,  which  ranks  with  the  greatest  State 
Papers  among  men,  spoke  of  the  war  then  raging,  not  as  a  rebellion,  but 
as  "THE  LAMENTABLE  CIVIL  STRIFE  IN  WHICH  WE  ARE  UN- 
AVOIDABLY ENGAGED."  Generals  Fitzhugh  Lee  and  Wheeler  were 
educated  at  West  Point ;  they  served  in  the  U.  S.  Army  in  their  earliest 
manhood,  in  the  Confederate  Army  in  their  mature  manhood,  and  again 
in  the  U.  S.  Army  in  their  maturest  manhood  and  old  age.  In  February, 
1897,  the  U.  S.  Senate  changed  the  term  Rebellion  in  a  bill  under  discus- 
sion to  CIVIL  WAR,  and  General  Luke  E.  Wright,  a  Confederate  vet- 
eran, is  Secretary  of  War  in  President  Roosevelt's  Cabinet. 

In  consideration  of  these  notable  changes  in  public  sentiment,  it  does 
not  seem  too  soon  to  anticipate  the  Historian  of  the  Future,  and  to  dis- 
cuss : 

I. 

SECESSION   IN  THEORY,  AS  THE  FRAMERS  OF 
THE  CONSTITUTION  VIEWED  IT; 

II. 

SECESSION  AS  PRACTISED  AND  AS  SUSTAINED 
BY  THE  UNITED  STATES; 

III. 

SECESSION  AS  ATTEMPTED  BY  THE  CONFED- 
ERATE  STATES. 
In  discussing  Secession  in  theory,  the  work  of  others  has  been  used 
at  will,  each  citation  being  verified,  and  various  citations  not  heretofore 
used  have  also  been  made. 

In  discussing  Secession  as  practiced  by  the  United  States,  and  as  at- 
tempted by  the  Confederate  States,  some  views  are  advanced  which  have 
not  been  heretofore  presented,  as  far  as  has  been  ascertained. 


I.    Secession  in  Theory. 

When  some  one  asked  an  expert  student  of  child  life  when  the  educa- 
tion of  a  child  should  begin,  he  repliad,  At  least  one  hundred  years  be- 
fore the  child  was  born,  and  two  thousand  years  would  have  been  a  bet- 
ter answer.  In  discussing  secession  in  theory,  I  shall  inquire  into  the 
pre-natal  life  of  the  frainers  of  the  Constitution  for  two  thousand  years, 
in  order  to  get  a  proper  perspective  on  this  most  notable  body  of  men, 
and  then  I  shall  inquire  into  the  conditions  and  discussions  immediately 
preceding,  and  at  its  adoption,  on  which  the  proper  interpretation  of  any 
piece  of  legislation  largely  depends. 

The  history  of  the  world  is  hot  the  history  of  countries,  but  of 
RACES,  and  each  race  which  has  been  eminent  and  dominant  has  had 
some  distinctive  race  characteristic  along  the  line  of  which  it  has  devel- 
oped. The  Teuton  is  the  dominant  man  of  today  and  from  his  beginning 
hitherto  he  has  been  unconquered  and  unconquerable,  and  has  never 
had  any  rulers  except  of  his  own  choice.  The  great  Caesar  said  that  the 
Empire  had  reached  the  sand  desert  on  the  south  and  was  safe  on  the 
south ;  that  he  had  carried  it  to  the  sand  desert  of  the  East  and  to  the 
Ocean  desert  of  the  West,  and  that  it  was  safe  on  the  East  and  on  the 
West ;  but  with  the  prevision  of  genius  he  said  that  the  danger  was  from 
the  NORTH ;  and  it  was  his  purpose  to  hurl  the  whole  force  of  the  Em- 
pire, when  he  should  control  it,  against  our  Teutonic  ancestors,  and 
Latinize  Germany  as  he  had  Latinized  Gaul  so  completely  that  the  hand 
of  the  great  Caesar  rests  on  France  still  as  the  head  of  Latin  Europe. 
Tacitus  says,  "Others  give  battle ;  but  the  Germans  make  WAR."  But 
with  the  whole  force  of  the  greatest  military  power  which  the  world  has 
seen,  Shakespeare's  foremost  man  of  all  this  world,  stimulated  by  his 
prophetic  vision  of  the  destruction  of  the  Empire  at  the  hands  of  these 
Northern  barbarians,  would  have  Latinized  Germany,  and  Europ- 
ean history  would  have  been  written  differently.  But  Brutus's  dagger 
preserved  the  Germans,  and  Augustus  said  on  his  death-bead,  "O  Varus, 
my  legions,  my  legions,  where  are  my  legions !"  The  Germans  had  de- 
stroyed them  to  a  man  and  Caesar's  prophecy  was  fulfilled  four  hundred 
years  later. 

The  Teutons,  who  became  stationary,  when,  in  their  migrations  west- 
ward, they  reached  the  North  Sea  and  the  Baltic,  though  they  have 
never  had  any  rulers  except  of  their  own  choice,  have  been  dominated  by 
their  rulers ;  though  they  have  become  more  restless  under  this  domina- 
tion of  late  years  ;  but  the  still  migratory  Teutons,  who  under  Hengist  and 
Horsa,  turned  Britain  into  Angleland,  and  who  from  thence  have  con- 
tinued to  move  westward  till  their  possessions  encircle  the  whole  earth, 
have  always  dominated  their  rulers.  They  soon  absorbed  their  temporary 
Norman  masters,  and,  inspired  by  their  most  marked  characteristic,  their 
intense  instinct  of  local  self-government,  the  Saxon  churl  became  the 
Earl,  the  Duke  and  the  King.  Inspired  by  this  intensest  instinct  of  our 
race,  our  ancestors  freed  themselves  from  feudal  vassalage  to  the  Plan- 
tagenets  and  established  the  principles  of  the  Magna  Charta.  They  freed 
themselves  from  ecclesiastical  vassalage  to  a  foreign  potentate  and  es- 
tablished the  Church  of  England  instead  of  the  Church  of  Rome  in  the 
time  of  the  Tudors.  They  freed  themselves  from  domestic  ecclesiastical 
and  political  vassalage  to  the  Stuarts  and  established  the  principles  of 


The  Bill  of  Rights.  And  when  the  Cavaliers  despaired  of  their  local 
rights  under  Cromwell,  and  the  Puritans  felt  hopeless  with  a  Stuart  on 
the  throne  again,  like  Abraham,  seeking  a  country,  both  Cavaliers  and 
Puritans  came  to  the  New  World,  and  wrested  the  American  wilderness 
from  savage  beasts  and  more  savage  men,  in  order  to  be  their  own  mas- 
ters. But  when  the  hand  across  the  sea  infringed  on  their  local  rights, 
they  seceded  from  England,  freed  themselves  from  the  vassalage  of  tax- 
ation without  representation  under  the  House  of  Brunswick,  established 
the  principles  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  blood,  and  England 
acknowledged  the  thirteen  colonies,  after  the  War  of  the  first  Secession 
ended  successfully  for  the  secessionists,  not  as  a  new  nation  in  the  ag- 
gregate, but  as  thirteen  Sovereign  and  Independent  Nations. 

This  first  War  of  Secession  was  won,  with  the  aid  of  France,  under 
"The  Articles  of  Confederation  and  Perpetual  Union."  The  style  of  this 
Confederacy,  the  Articles  say,  shall  be  "The  United  States  of  America, 
reserving  to  the  States  full  sovereignty  and  all  rights  not  expressly 
granted  to  Congress."  Till  the  war  was  over,  "they  hung  together,"  as 
Dr.  Franklin  expressed  it,  "lest  they  should  hang  separately." 

But  the  conditions  under  "The  Articles  of  Confederation  and  PER- 
PETUAL Union"  proved  unsatisfactory,  and  the  right  of  secession  hav- 
ing been  established  by  the  sword,  the  second  act  of  secession  occurred, 
which  was,  from  "The  Articles  of  Confederation  and  PERPETUAL 
Union,"  lasting  only  thirteen  years,  into  "The  More  Perfect  Union"  of 
the  Constitution,  in  which  the  idea  of  perpetuity  was  most  conspicuously 
and  most  significantly  left  out. 

Webster,  the  great  apostle  of  Nationalism,  and  called  the  profound- 
est  constitutional  lawyer  of  his  time,  in  his  debate  with  Hayne  in  1833, 
said,  "If  a  league  between  sovereign  powers  have  no  limitation  as  to  time, 
and  contain  nothing  to  make  it  perpetual,  it  subsists  only  during  the 
good  pleasure  of  the  parties."  That  the  Constitution  was  such  a  league 
or  compact  between  sovereign  powers  is  proved  most  conclusively  from 
the  testimony  of  its  trainers.  It  is  a  principle  of  the  common  law  of  all 
races  in  all  ages  that  the  parties  to  a  compact,  with  no  duration  of  time 
set  in  the  instrument,  may  withdraw  from  it  at  will.  There  is  no  time 
set  in  the  "New  Articles  of  Union,"  as  in  the  "Perpetual  Union"  of  the 
Articles  of  Confederation,  because  the  "new  articles  of  Union"  were  re- 
garded as  an  experiment  by  their  framers,  from  which  they  might  with- 
draw at  will,  if  their  local  autonomy  should  be  endangered  thereby. 
Nowhere  among  men  had  the  tide  of  local  autonomy  risen  so  high  as 
among  the  thirteen  sovereign  States  after  the  War  of  Secession  from 
England.  It  took  tbese  thirteen  independent  Republics  from  1783  to 
1789  to  compromise  their  local  rights  and  local  jealousies  sufficiently  to 
form  a  federal  union  on  any  conditions ;  and  but  for  fear  of  attack  from 
without,  or  of  protectorates  assumed  by  foreign  powers  over  individual 
States,  it  is  doubtful  whether  they  would  have  united  at  all.  Their  an- 
cestors had  resisted  the  Plantagenets  successfully.  Their  ancestors  had 
resisted  the  Church  of  Rome  successfully.  Their  ancestors  had  beheaded 
Charles  Stuart  and  expelled  James  Stuart.  And  when  George  III.  op- 
pressed them,  Patrick  Henry  said,  "Caesar  had  his  Brutus ;  Charles 
I    had  his  Cromwell,  and  George  III.  may  porfit  by  their  example." 


A  government  sufficiently  strong  for  defense  and  offense  must  be 
endowed  with  powers  delegated  by  thirteen  Sovereign  Republics  and 
with  no  others;  and  all  other  powers  and  rights  must  remain  with  the 
States.  The  framers  of  the  Constitution  realized  the  necessity  of  com- 
mitting the  sword  and  the  purse  to  the  general  government ;  and  yet  they 
remembered  how  the  man  of  Macedon  had  overwhelmed  the  Greek  re- 
publics, how  the  Roman  Republic  perished  at  the  hands  of  the 
Caasars,  how  any  one  who  resisted  the  tyranny  of  the  Doge  of  Venice 
passed  through  the  Bridge  of  Sighs  to  the  Doge's  prison  and  speedy 
death,  and  a  similar  fate  had  befallen  all  attempts  at  a  government  of 
the  people  in  all  the  past.  Knowing  that  the  federal  government,  en- 
dowed with  the  power  of  the  purse  and  of  the  sword,  might  easily  en- 
croach on  the  States,  while  the  States  could  not  encroach  on  the  general 
government,  it  was  their  purpose  to  create  a  general  government  of 
minimum  powers,  all  distinctly  specified,  composed  of  Independent 
States  with  maximum  powers,  including  all  the  powers  not  delegated ; 
and  the  powers  delegated  to  the  general  government  were  not  del- 
egated "in  fee  simple,"  so  to  speak,  but  on  the  condition,  ipsis  verbis,  as 
shall  be  hereinafter  clearly  shown,  that  these  powers  should  be  resumed 
by  three  of  the  states,  Virginia,  New  York  and  Rhode  Island,  if  in  the 
judgment  of  these  States,  these  powers  should  be  used  by  the  general 
government  for  the  oppression  of  the  states,  just  as  a  testator  often 
wills  property  to  an  heir  on  condition  that  it  shall  revert  to  the  original 
owner  if  the  conditions  of  the  transfer  should  be  violated.  Such  a  con- 
dition, made  inherent  in  one  party  to  a  compact,  must  adhere  to  every 
other  party  to  the  compact. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  convention  of  1787  was  composed  of  the 
wisest,  the  most  intelligent  and  the  most  patriotic  men  who  ever  un- 
dertook to  organize  a  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people  and  for 
the  people.  But  with  all  their  wisdom,  their  work  was  a  foredoomed 
failure  from  the  first.  Every  republic  in  all  the  past  had  failed  through 
internal  strife  or  external  violence.  The  task  of  the  framers  of  the  Con- 
stitution was  not  only  to  organize  a  republic  in  the  usual  sense,  which 
others  in  all  the  past  had  failed  to  do  successfully,  but  to  organize  a 
Republic  of  Republics,  a  Sovereignty  of  Sovereignties.  The  Almighty 
balances  the  centripetal  and  centrifugal  forces  so  that  the  heavenly 
bodies  revolve  in  their  orbits  from  age  to  age.  But  it  was  beyond  the 
wisdom  and  power  of  mortal  man  to  balance  the  centripetal  and  centri- 
fugal forces  in  a  Republic  of  Republics  so  that  some  of  the  Independent 
Sovereignties  already  in  the  union,  or  to  be  in  it  later,  should  not  come 
into  conflict,  not  only  with  the  powers,  but  with  the  necessities  of  the 
general  government.  Such  a  conflict  was  imminent  in  1803  on  account  of 
expansion  through  the  Louisiana  purchase.  It  was  imminent  in  1S14 
through  a  foreign  War,  when  New  England  proposed  to  secede  from 
the  Union  and  resume  her  allegiance  to  Great  Britain.  It  was  immi- 
nent in  1832  through  taxation,  the  thing  which  had  precipitated  the  se- 
cession from  England  in  1776.     Some  of  these  causes  might  recur. 

After  a  terrible  war  which  settled  some  of  the  questions  left  unsettled 
by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution,  the  country  is  still  in  jeopardy  both 
at  home  and  abroad  by  conditions  not  provided  for  or  against ;  and  un- 


expected  emergencies,  like  the  Spanish  War,  may  arise  at  any  time, 
necessitating  action  not  provided  for  under  our  system. 

As  an  example  of  a  domestic  menace  not  provided  against  by  the 
Constitution,  the  white  citizens  of  Springfield,  Illinois.  President  Lin- 
coln's own  State  and  President  Lincoln's  own  home  city,  may  murder 
their  black  fellow-citizens,  burn  their  houses  and  churches,  and  chase  the 
survivors,  their  women  and  their  children  from  the  city  a  second  time 
as  they  did  with  impunity  in  August  of  the  year  of  grace  1908,  and  un- 
less the  local  authorities  choose  to  punish  the  criminals  for  making  war 
not  only  on  men  accused  of  crimes  and  of  being  undesirable  citizens,  but 
upon  their  women  and  children,  both  the  State  of  Illinois  and  the  United 
States  Government  are  powerless  to  intervene,  and  men  guilty  of  murder 
and  arson  go  scot  free.  The  same  thing  occurred  twice  within  three 
years  in  Springfield,  Ohio,  President  McKinley's  own  State,  and  no  one 
of  the  law-breakers  has  been  punished  by  the  local  authorities  because 
the  local  authorities  are  in  sympathy  with  them  and  neither  the  State 
of  Ohio  nor  the  United  States  may  intervene. 

Mobs  may  anticipate  the  law  and  put  men  to  death  for  rape,  arson  or 
murder  in  any  section  of  the  union  as  mobs  have  done  in  every  section 
of  the  union,  and  unless  the  local  authorities  choose  to  punish  the  law- 
breakers, they  go  scot  free. 

If  Italy  had  demanded  blood  instead  of  a  mere  money  indemnity  for 
the  blood  of  her  citizens  murdered  with  impunity  in  Louisiana,  and  had 
sent  war  ships  to  New  Orleans  to  enforce  these  demands ;  if  China  of 
the  near  future  should  demand  blood  for  the  blood  of  her  citizens  mur- 
dered again,  as  they  were  murderd  with  impunity  on  the  Pacific  coast 
when  China  was  helpless ;  if  Japan  had  sent  war  ships  to  enforce  a  sol- 
emn treaty,  violated  with  impunity  by  the  single  city  of  San  Francisco, 
the  United  States  might  be  involved  in  a  foreign  war,  because  the  United 
States,  alone  among  the  great  powers  is  powerless,  under  our  system, 
to  punish  the  murderers  of  their  fellow  citizens,  or  of  the  citizens  of  a 
foreign  friendly  power,  against  the  verdict  of  a  jury  in  sympathy  with 
the  criminals ;  and  under  our  too  centrifugal  system  any  indemnity  must 
be  paid,  not  by  the  murderers,  not  by  the  county  or  state  of  which  the 
murderers  are  residents,  but  by  the  United  States  Government.  Such 
anomalous  conditions  constitute  a  constant  menace  both  at  home  and 
abroad. 

But  in  1S60  a  crisis  foreseen,  and  not  provided  against,  came  through 
the  election,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  Republic,  of  a  strictly 
sectional  President  and  Vice-President  by  a  small  but  compact  minority 
of  the  Northern  States. 

This  sectionalism  of  the  Northern  States  caused  the  Southern  States 
to  withdraw  from  the  union  for  the  preservation  of  their  local  rights,  in 
accordance  with  the  compact  of  1789,  as  the  framers  of  the  Constitution 
interpreted  it,  as  the  whole  country  interpreted  it  up  to  1830,  and  as  the 
United  States  Government  taught  it  at  West  Point,  as  shall  be  herein- 
after shown. 

In  order  to  form  a  union  at  all,  on  any  conditions,  many  compro- 
mises were  necessary.  As  far  back  as  1776  a  minority  saw  that  slavery 
was  a  menace  and  Jefferson  introduced  an  emancipation  section  into  the 


Declaration  of  Independence,  but  this  section  was  voted  out  by  the  ma- 
jority, in  17S7,  and  slavery  existed  in  every  one  of  the  thirteen  original 
States  without  further  protest,  was  made  as  much  a  part  of  the  Consti- 
tution as  the  President,  the  Vice-President  or  Congress,  and  a  premium 
was  put  on  it  by  allowing  every  slave  holder  five-fifths  of  a  vote  for  him- 
self and  three-fifths  of  a  vote  for  each  slave,  thereby  greatly  increasing 
the  slave-holder's  power.  The  slave-holders  were  further  placated  by 
incorporating  the  fugitive  slave  law  into  the  Constitution.  The  States 
engaged  in  the  slave  trade  (including  all  New  England,  but  excluding 
every  Southern  State)  refused  to  enter  the  Union  unless  they  should  be 
allowed  till  1S10  to  get  their  shipping  out  of  the  slave  trade.  The  small 
States,  which  had  no  grants  of  public  lands,  demanded  that  the  public 
lands  of  the  larger  States  should  be  turned  over  to  the  general  govern- 
ment. The  smaller  States  demanded  equal  representation  in  the  Senate 
with  the  larger  States,  and  through  this  most  unjust  discrimination 
against  the  larger  in  favor  of  the  smaller,  several  mining  camps  have 
been  foisted  of  late  on  the  Union  in  order  to  secure  Republican  senators 
for  oppressive  class  legislation,  and  nothing  emphasizes  state  sovereignty 
more  than  that  Rhode  Island  demanded  and  received  as  many  senators 
as  New  York  and  Virginia,  and  keeps  them  still. 

Questions  of  taxation,  of  interstate  commerce  came  up  for  adjust- 
ment and  caused  much  wrangling.  It  was  the  blood  and  breed  of 
people  of  these  thirteen  independent  republics  from  their  beginning  in 
the  forests  of  Germany  to  their  secession  from  England  and  again  from 
the  Confederation,  to  be  intensely  jealous  of  their  local  rights.  While 
they  saw  the  necessity  of  a  stronger  government  than  under  the  Con- 
federation, they  were  afraid  to  consign  their  individual  supremacy  in 
anything  to  any  general  government  even  of  their  own  creation,  without 
the  right  to  secede  from  it,  even  though  the  powers  not  expressly  granted 
to  the  United  States  by  the  Constitution,  nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the 
States,  were  most  distinctly  reserved  to  the  States  respectively.  Patrick 
Henry  opposed  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  bitterly.  "Away  with 
your  President,"  he  said ;  "we  shall  have  a  KING.  The  army  will  salute 
him  monarch.  Your  militia  will  leave  you  and  assist  in  making  him 
king  and  fight  against  you.  And  what  have  you  to  oppose  this  force? 
What  will  become  of  you  and  your  rights?  Will  not  absolute  despotism 
ensue?" 

Samuel  Adams,  one  of  the  great  revolutionary  leaders  of  Massa- 
chusetts, had  gone  to  the  convention  with  many  others  to  defeat  the  Con- 
stitution. In  a  letter  to  Richard  Henry  Lee,  dated  December  3,  1787,  he 
says,  "I  stumble  at  the  threshold.  I  meet  with  a  national  government 
instead  of  a  federal  union  of  sovereign  States.  If  the  several  States  are 
to  become  one  nation,  under  one  legislature,  its  powers  to  extend  to  all 
legislation,  and  its  laws  to  be  supreme  and  control  the  whole,  the  idea 
of  the  sovereignty  of  these  States  must  be  lost."  Late  in  the  session, 
when  everything  betokened  defeat,  Gov.  Hancock  came  forward  with 
conciliatory  propositions,  embodying  what  afterwards  became  the  Tenth 
Amendment,  and  Samuel  Adams  said,  "Your  Excellency's  first  proposi- 
tion is,  that  it  be  explicity  declared  that  all  powers  not  expressly  dele- 
gated to  Congress  are  reserved  to  the  several  States  to  be  by  them  ex- 


ercised.  This  appears  to  my  mind  to  be  a  summary  of  a  bill  of  rights 
which  gentlemen  are  anxious  to  obtain.  *  *  *  It  is  consonant  with  the 
Second  Article  of  present  Confederation  that  each  State  retains  its  sov- 
ereignty, freedom  and  independence  and  every  power,  jurisdiction  and 
right,  which  is  not  by  the  Confederation  expressly  delegated  to  the 
United  States  in  Congress  assembled."  (II.  Elliott's  Debates,  p.  131. 
Republic  of  Republics,  pp.  85-86.) 

How  amply  have  Patrick  Henry's  prophesies  and  Samuel  Adams' 
fears  been  fulfilled  in  the  history  of  the  Southern  States  since  1S61 ! 

It  will  help  us  to  realize  the  difficulties  under  which  the  trainers  of 
the  Constitution  labored  to  remember  that  in  1787,  four  years  after  the 
treaty  of  peace,  Benjamin  Franklin,  then  81  years  of  age,  and  supposed 
in  his  earlier  life  to  have  been  an  atheist,  moved  that  prayer  be  offered 
every  morning  at  the  opening  of  the  Convention,  using  these  words,  "We 
are  assured  in  the  sacred  writings  that  'except  the  Lord  build  the  house, 
they  labor  in  vain  who  build  it.'  I  firmly  believe  this,  and  I  also  believe 
that  without  this  concurring  aid,  we  shall  proceed  in  this  political  build- 
ing no  better  than  the  builders  of  Babel.  We  shall  be  divided  by  our 
little,  partial,  local  interests ;  our  prosperity  will  be  confounded,  and 
we  ourselves  shall  be  a  reproach  and  a  by-word  to  future  ages.  And, 
what  is  worse,  mankind  may  hereafter  from  this  unfortunate  instance 
despair  of  founding  a  government  by  human  wisdom  and  leave  it  to 
chance,  war  or  conquest."  (Madison  Papers,  I.  p.  259,  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons,  190S.) 

It  having  been  shown  who  and  what  manner  of  men  the  framers  of 
the  Constitution  were  from  their  beginning  in  the  forests  of  Germany 
two  thousand  years  ago,  to  their  latest  migration  to  the  forests  of  Amer- 
ica in  obedience  to  their  intensest  instinct,  the  instinct  of  local  self-gov- 
ernment, any  student  of  the  man  of  Anglo-Saxon  blood  and  breed  in  all 
the  past,  and  especially  at  this  particular  crisis,  is  prepared  to  say  that 
it  is  not  within  the  bounds  of  possibility  for  these  Independent  Repub- 
lics, all  intensely  jealous  of  their  liberties  and  of  each  other,  to  commit 
the  power  of  the  purse  and  sword  unconditionally  to  the  collective  will 
of  the  whole  American  people,  or  to  any  other  person  or  persons  what- 
soever, when  there  was  nothing  except  a  king  which  they  dreaded  as 
much  as  a  consolidated  democracy.  The  referendum  was  more  than  100 
years  in  the  womb  of  the  future,  and  is  of  very  doubtful  value  now  that 
it  has  been  born.  The  Colonies  had  won  the  right  of  secession  from 
Great  Britain  with  the  sword.  As  the  United  States  of  1783  they  had 
exercised  the  right  of  secession  at  will  from  the  Articles  of  Confedera- 
tion and  Perpetual  Union. 

It  is  not  conceivable  that  these  thirteen  Independent  Republics 
should  have  committed  themselves  to  the  "New  Articles  of  Union,"  as  the 
Constitution  was  constantly  called  by  its  framers,  without  protecting 
their  cherished  liberties  by  retaining  the  right  of  seceding  from  the  New 
Articles  at  will,  as  they  had  seceded  forcibly  from  England  and  peace- 
ably from  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  and  of  resuming  the  powers  del- 
egated conditionally  to  the  general  Government,  if  these  powers  should 
be  used  for  their  oppression.  And  to  this  end  the  absence  of  any  dura- 
tion of  time  to  the  compact  carried  the  right  of  withdrawal  from  it  at 

9 


will  on  its  very  face,  as  even  Webster  himself  admits,  and  three  of  the 
States  entered  the  Union  conditionally,  as  shall  be  hereafter  shown. 

In  his  debate  with  Hayne  in  1833,  forty-three  years  after  the  adop- 
tion of  the  Constitution,  Webster  said  that  if  the  Constitution  was  a 
compact  between  the  States,  to  which  they  acceded  one  by  one,  they 
could  secede  from  it  at  will,  but  he  denied  in  1833  that  the  union  was  a 
compact,  and  he  called  the  word  "compact"  UNCONSTITUTIONAL 
language.  He  said  further  as  has  already  been  noted,  "If  a  league  be- 
tween sovereign  powers  have  no  limitation  as  to  time  and  contain  noth- 
ing to  make  it  perpetual,  it  subsists  only  during  the  good  pleasure  of  the 
parties."  Justice  Story,  in  his  Commentaries  on  the  Constitution,  Vol. 
III.,  p.  287,  says,  "The  deductions  drawn  from  considering  the  Consti- 
tution a  compact  between  the  States  are  that  it  has  an  obligatory  force 
no  longer  than  suits  the  pleasure  or  consent"   (of  the  States.) 

Now,  if  it  can  be  shown  from  the  words  of  the  framers  of  the  Consti- 
tution that  it  icas  a  compact  between  the  States  and  that  the  States  did 
accede  to  it,  the  theoretical  right  of  secession  is  admitted  by  the  extreme 
Nationalists  themselves. 

The  Constitution  a  Compact. 

Madison,  the  acknowledged  father  of  the  Constitution,  called  it  a 
COMPACT,  not  only  during  the  session  of  the  convention  of  1787,  but  all 
the  rest  of  his  life.  "In  case  of  a  union  of  the  people  under  one  Con- 
stitution," he  says,  in  urging  the  ratification  of  the  new  articles  of 
union,  "the  nature  of  the  PACT  has  always  been  understood,  etc' 
(Madison  Papers,  p.  11S4.) 

In  the  Virginia  Resolutions  of  1798,  drafted  by  Madison,  he  says, 
"This  Assembly  doth  explicitly  and  peremptorily  declare  that  it  views 
the  powers  of  theFederal  Government  as  resulting  from  the  COMPACTS  to 
which  the  States  are  parties ;  as  limited  by  the  plain  sense  and  intention 
of  the  instrument  constituting  the  COMPACT ;  as  no  further  valid  than 
they  are  authorized  by  the  grants  authorized  by  that  COMPACT ;  and  in 
case  of  a  deliberate,  palpable  and  dangerous  exercise  of  other  powers  not 
granted  by  the  said  COMPACT,  the  States  which  are  parties  thereto 
have  the  right  and  are  in  duty  bound  to  interpose  for  arresting  the 
progress  of  the  evil  and  for  maintaining  within  their  respective  limits 
the  authorities,  rights  and  liberties  appertaining  to  them."  (Larned's 
History  for  Ready  Reference,  Vol.  V.,  p.  3322.)  Again  in  his  letter  to 
Mr.  Everitt  in  1830,  Madison  calls  the  Constitution  "A  COMPACT  be- 
tween the  States  in  their  highest  sovereign  capacity."  In  the  same  letter 
he  speaks  of  the  States  as  "parties  to  the  constitutional  COMPACT." 
Governor  Morris,  the  representative  from  Pennsylvania  and  a  steady 
advocate  of  a  strong  national  Government,  used  these  words  (Madison 
Papers,  1081-2),  "He  came  here  to  form  a  compact  for  the  good  of 
America.  He  hoped  and  believed  that  all  the  States  would  enter  into 
such  a  compact.  But  as  the  compact  was  to  be  voluntary,  it  was  vain 
for  the  Eastern  States  to  insist  on  what  the  Southern  States  would  not 
agree  to."  Chief  Justice  Jay  of  the  Supreme  Court,  in  the  case  of  Chis- 
holm  vs.  the  State  of  Georgia,  3  Dal.  R.  P.  419,  says.  "The  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  is  a  COMPACT."     John  Quincy  Adams,  the  sixth 

10 


President,  says,  "The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  all  our  State 
Constitutions,  have  been  voluntary  COMPACTS,  deriving  their  authority 
from  the  free  consent  of  the  parties  to  them."  Again  in  the  Virginia 
Reports  of  1S00  it  is  said,  "The  States  being  parties  to  the  Constitutional 
COMPACT."  Edmund  Pendleton,  President  of  the  ratifying  Convention 
of  Virginia,  says,  "This  is  the  only  Government  founded  on  a  real  COM- 
PACT." (Elliott  Debates,  Vol.  III.,  p.  57.)  Judge  Tucker,  in  his  Com- 
mentaries on  Blackstone,  frequently  calls  the  Constitution  a  COMPACT 
between  the  States. 

Jefferson  was  Minister  to  France  during  the  Convention  of  17S7 ; 
but  his  attitude  towards  the  powers  of  the  Federal  Governmnt  are 
plainly  indicated.  "The  States."  he  says  in  his  Correspondence,  Vol.  V., 
p.  415,  "Entered  into  a  COMPACT  which  is  called  The  Constitution  of 
the  United  States."  In  the  Kentucky  Resolutions,  passed  by  the  Legis- 
lature of  Kentucky  on  November  13th,  179S,  approved  by  the  Governor 
on  the  16th,  and  sent  officially  by  him  to  every  other  State  and  to  the 
members  of  Congress,  Jefferson  uses  the  following  language:  "Resolved, 
that  the  several  States  composing  the  United  States  of  America  are  not 
united  on  the  principle  of  unlimited  submission  to  their  general  govern- 
ment ;  but  that  by  COMPACT  under  the  style  and  title  of  a  Constitution 
for  the  United  States  and  of  amendments  thereto,  they  constitute  a  Gen- 
eral Government  for  special  purposes,  delegating  to  that  Government 
certain  definite  powers,  reserving  each  State  to  itself  the  residuary  mass 
of  right  to  their  own  self-government ;  and  that  whensoever  the  General 
Government  assumes  undelegated  powers,  its  acts  were  unauthoritative, 
void  and  of  no  force ;  that  to  this  COMPACT  each  State  acceded  as  a 
State ;  *  *  *  that  the  Government  CREATED  by  this  COMPACT  was  not 
made  the  exclusive  or  final  judge  of  the  extent  of  the  powers  delegated 
to  itself,  since  that  would  have  made  its  discretion,  not  the  Constitu- 
tion, the  measure  of  its  powers ;  but,  that,  as  in  all  other  cases  of  COM- 
PACT among  parties  having  no  common  judge,  each  party  has  an  equal 
right  to  judge  for  itself,  as  well  of  infractions,  as  of  the  mode  and 
measure  of  redress."  (Larned's  History  for  Ready  Reference,  Vol.  V., 
p.  3319.)  Even  the  Federalist,  No.  39,  sets  the  Constitution  before  the 
public  as  a  COMPACT.  And  Webster,  called,  "the  great  expounder  of 
the  Constitution,  and  the  greatest  constitutional  lawyer  of  his  time,"  is 
a  very  strong  witness  to  the  Constitution's  being  a  compact.  Before 
1830  no  one  had  discovered  that  the  Constitution  was  not  a  compact.  In 
the  great  debate  on  the  Foote  Resolutions  in  1S30,  Webster,  like  every- 
body else  up  to  that  time,  spoke  of  the  Constitution  as  a  COMPACT. 
"It  is  the  original  bargain,  the  Compact ;  let  it  stand,"  he  said.  "Let  the 
advantage  of  it  be  fully  enjoyed.  The  Union  is  too  full  of  benefits  to  be 
hazarded  by  propositions  to  change  its  original  basis.  I  go  for  the  Con- 
stitution as  it  is  and  the  Union  as  it  is ;"  and  he  repels  "both  for  himself 
and  for  the  North  accusations  which  impute  to  us  a  disposition  to  evade 
the  Constitutional  COMPACT."  This  was  just  forty-one  years  after  the 
Constitution  was  adopted.  In  the  great  debate  of  1833  Webster  had 
changed  his  opinion  and  said  that  the  Constitution  was  not  a  compact, 
and  that  the  word  "compact"  as  applied  to  it  was  "unconstitutional 
language,"  although  it  had  been  used  constantly  by  the  framers  of  the 

11 


Constitution  from  1787,  as  has  been  already  shown,  and  was  distinctly 
used  by  himself  in  1830.  But  by  1850  he  had  receded  from  his  position 
in  1833,  when  he  said  (Webster's  Works,  Vol.  V.,  p.  159),  "The  North 
finds  itself  in  regard  to  the  relative  influence  of  the  South  and  North  of 
the  free  States  and  the  slave  States,  where  it  never  ex- 
pected to  find  itself  when  they  agreed  to  the  COMPACT  of  the  Consti- 
tution." In  the  same  speech  (page  574),  he  says,  "When  the  Constitu- 
tion was  framed,  its  framers  and  the  people  who  adopted  it,  came  to  a 
clear,  express,  unquestionable  stipulation  and  COMPACT."  (Webster's 
Works,  Vol.  II.,  p.  574.)  In  the  same  speech  he  says  in  connection  with 
the  NULLIFICATION  of  the  Constitution  by  the  refusal  to  obey  the 
fugitive  slave  law,  "These  States  passed  acts  (fourteen  Northern  States 
in  all  did  so),  defeating  the  law  of  Congress.  They  said  in  effect,  we 
will  not  execute  it.  Thus  the  law  is  become  a  dead  letter.  But  here 
was  the  Constitution  and  COMPACT  still  binding."  And  in  the  same 
speech  he  calls  this  nullification  of  the  Constitution  treason  and  says 
further :  "It  has  been  said  in  the  States  of  New  York,  Massachusetts 
and  Ohio  that  the  fugitive  slave  law  shall  not  be  executed.  These  pro- 
ceedings are  distinctly  treasonable.  The  act  of  taking  Shadrick  from 
the  public  authorities  of  Boston  was  a  clear  act  of  treason."  Mr.  Web- 
ster says  again,  "I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  and  to  repeat  that  if  the 
Northern  States  wilfully  and  deliberately  refuse  to  carry  out  that  part 
of  the  Constitution  which  respects  the  restoration  of  fugitive  slaves,  the 
South  would  no  longer  be  bound  to  keep  the  COMPACT.  A  bargain 
broken  on  one  side  is  broken  on  all  sides."  That  is,  the  South  would 
have  a  right  to  secede. 

After  seeing  this  testimony  it  cannot  be  denied  that  its  framers  con- 
sidered the  Constitution  a  COMPACT,  and  we  call  on  Webster  himself 
to  decide  who  the  rebels  and  traitors  are,  if  the  men  who  created  the 
Constitution  can  be  allowed  to  interpret  it. 

The  Constitution  Acceded  To. 

The  testimony  that  it  was  acceded  to  by  the  States  is  equally  con- 
vincing. In  the  debate  with  Calhoun,  forty-four  years  after  the  Consti- 
tution was  adopted,  Webster  said,  "If  in  adopting  the  Constitution  noth- 
ing was  done  but  acceding  to  it.  nothing  would  be  necessary  in  order  to 
break  it  up,  but  to  secede  from  it.  This  term  accede  is  wholly  out  of 
place.  It  is  unconstitutional  language."  But  no  form  of  expression  was 
more  common  among  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  in  speaking  of  its 
being  adopted  than  "the  accession  of  the  States  to  it."  James  Wilson, 
of  Pennsylvania,  whose  fame  has  been  steadily  growing,  "preferred  a 
partial  union  of  the  States  with  the  door  open  for  the  accession  of  the 
rest  rather  than  to  see  a  disposition  defeated  to  confederate  on  better 
principles."     (Madison  Papers,  p.  797.) 

Madison,  the  father  of  the  Constitution,  spoke  of  acceding  to  the  new 
form  of  government  by  the  States.  (Madison  Papers,  p.  1103.)  Gov- 
ernor Randolph,  of  Virginia,  said,  "The  accession  of  eight  States  re- 
duced our  deliberations  to  the  single  question  of  Union  or  no  Union." 
Patrick  Henry  said.  "If  the  Constitution  be  amended,  every  State  will 
accede  to  it."     (Elliott  Debates.  Vol.  III.,  p.  652.) 

12 


"I  come  hither,"  said  Innes,  "under  the  persuasion  that  the  felicity 
of  our  country  requires  that  we  should  accede  to  this  system"  (the  Con- 
stitution.) (Elliott  Debates,  Vol.  III.,  p.  632.)  Franklin,  the  most  dis- 
tinguished member  of  the  Convention  except  Washington,  said,  "Our  new 
Constitution  is  now  established  with  eleven  States,  and  the  accession 
of  a  twelfth  is  soon  expected."  (Franklin's  Works.  Vol.  V.,  p.  409.) 
And  finally  we  add  the  testimony  of  Washington  himself,  who  says,  "If 
these,  with  the  States  Eastward  and  Northward  of  us  should  accede  to 
the  Federal  Government."  (Writings  of  Washington,  Vol.  IX..  p.  280.) 
And  in  a  letter  to  Bushrod  Washington,  he  said,  "Let  the  opponents  of 
the  proposed  Constitution  be  asked,  and  it  is  a  question  they  certainly 
ought  to  ask  themselves,  what  line  of  conduct  they  would  advise,  if  none 
other  States,  of  which  I  think  there  is  little  doubt,  should  accede  to  the 
Constitution." 

Chief  Justice  Marshall  says  in  his  Life  of  Washington,  Vol.  V.,  Chap. 
3,  "This  intelligence  was  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  accession  of 
North  Carolina  to  the  Union."  Justice  Story  says,  "The  Constitution 
has  been  ratified  by  all  the  States ;  Rhode  Island  did  not  accede  to  it  till 
more  than  a  year  after  it  had  been  in  operation."  Book  III.,  Chap.  43. 
And  in  the  Kentucky  Resolutions  of  1798,  Jefferson,  as  already  referred 
to  says.  "To  this  Compact  each  State  acceded  as  a  State." 

Thus  Webster,  "the  great  Expoundor  of  the  Constitution."  admits 
the  abstract  right  of  secession,  if  the  Constitution  was  a  compact,  and 
if  it  was  acceded  to  by  the  States.  It  has  been  shown  that  Webster  had 
not  discovered  that  it  was  not  a  compact  in  1830,  that  he  asserted  in 
1833  that  it  was  not  a  compact,  and  in  1851  he  returned  to  his  own 
opinion  held  in  1830  that  it  was  a  compact,  an  opinion  held  by  all  tbe 
framers  of  the  Constitution,  and  by  the  whole  country  up  to  1830.  The 
proof  that  it  was  acceded  to  by  the  States  is  clear,  if  we  can  accept  the 
testimony  of  its  framers,  including  Franklin,  and  Washington  himself. 
In  Webster's  celebrated  debate  with  Calhoun,  Calhoun  reminded  him 
that  the  principles  he  advanced  would  be  subjected  to  the  judgment  of 
posterity.  "I  do  not  decline  its  judgment  nor  withhold  myself  from  its 
scrutiny."  Webster  replied.  Posterity  has  judged  sooner  than  could 
have  been  expected.  Senator  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  of  Massachusetts,  a 
successor  of  Webster's  in  the  United  States  Senate,  in  his  Life  of  Web- 
ster, American  Statesmen  Series,  page  176,  uses  the  following  language : 
"In  his  reply  to  Hayne  (in  1833)  Webster  labored  to  show,  first,  that 
nullification  had  never  found  foothold  in  New  England,  and  second,  that 
the  Federal  Constitution  was  not  a  compact.  Unfortunately  the  facts 
were  against  Webster  in  both  instances.  When  the  Constitution  was 
adopted  by  the  vote  of  the  States  in  Philadelphia,  and  accepted  by  the 
vote  of  the  States  in  popular  Conventions,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  there 
was  not  a  man  in  the  country  from  Washington  and  Hamilton  on  one 
side  to  George  Clinton  and  George  Mason  on  the  other,  who  regarded 
the  new  system  as  anything  but  an  experiment,  entered  upon  by  the 
States,  from  whicb  ^ach  and  every  State  had  the  right  peaceably  to 
withdraw,  a  right  which  was  very  likely  to  be  exercised." 

Webstee's  National  Govebnment  Claim. 
A  study  of  the  discussions  of  the  Convention  of  1787  refutes  two 

13 


other  claims  of  the  Nationalists  if  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  un- 
derstood what  they  were  doing.  Webster  and  his  followers  stress  the 
claim  that  the  first  resolution  passed  by  the  Convention  of  17S7  was, 
"That  a  NATIONAL  Government  be  established."  But  this  resolution 
was  passed  before  the  Convention  had  a  quorum,  only  six  States  being 
represented  up  to  that  time.  When  the  Convention  was  full,  this  reso- 
lution for  a  National  Government  was  reconsidered  and  rescinded  by  a 
unanimous  vote  (Madison  Papers,  pp.  90S,  909.)  And  yet  Webster  and 
Story,  in  the  face  of  the  facts  of  the  case,  and  in  default  of  any  better 
foundation  than  their  own  opinion,  built  what  they  parade  as  a  weighty 
argument  on  a  resolution  which  was  rejected  unanimously  by  the  fram- 
ers of  the  Constitution. 

The  Referendum  Claim  Examined. 

Again,  more  than  forty  years  after  17S9.  Webster  and  his  school  be- 
gan to  press  the  claim  that  the  words,  "We,  the  people  of  the  United 
States,"  in  the  preamble  of  the  Constitution,  make  the  Constitution  para- 
mount law  through  the  action  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  in  the 
aggregate,  and  abrogate  State  sovereignty.  The  framers  of  the  Con- 
stitution left  the  clearest  testimony  to  the  contrary.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  preamble  to  the  "New  Articles  of  Union,"  as  its  framers  called 
the  Constitution,  began  exactly  as  the  Articles  of  Confederation  did. 
"We,  the  people  of  the  United  States,"  naming  the  original  thirteen 
States  individually.  This  continued  for  more  than  a  year,  until  it  be- 
came doubtful  whether  all  the  thirteen  States  would  accede  to  the  "new 
articles,"  or  whether  any  of  them  would,  and  which  ones  would,  if  any 
should ;  and  after  much  discussion  and  much  wrangling,  it  was  agreed 
that  nine  States  should  make  a  quorum ;  and  when  nine  States  acceded 
to  the  Constitution,  Washington  was  inaugurated,  and  the  door  was  left 
open  for  the  accession  of  the  others  to  come  in  individually,  if  their 
people  in  convention  assembled  should  see  fit  to  do  so,  just  as  those  al- 
ready in  the  Union  had  come  in  individually,  by  the  action  of  the  con- 
vention of  each  State.  Gouverneur  Morris,  afterward  minister  to  France 
and  Senator  from  New  York,  a  zealous  advocate  of  a  strong  government, 
moved  that  "the  reference  of  the  plan  of  the  new  articles  of  Union  be 
made  to  a  general  convention,  chosen  and  authorized  by  the  people  to  con- 
sider, amend  and  establish  the  same."  But  this  motion  did  not  receive 
a  second  in  the  convention  of  1787,  such  a  mode  of  ratification  being 
deemed  impossible  by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  (Madison  Papers, 
p.  1184.)  The  people  of  the  United  States  in  the  aggregate  are  not  now, 
*  never  were,  and  never  can  be  a  political  entity.  Except  in  a  merely 
geographical  or  in  a  sentimental  sense,  no  such  "people"  ever  existed. 
They  have  no  political  existence.  They  have  no  method  of  legislation  on 
any  subject  whatever.  They  have  never  elected  a  President,  Vice- 
President  or  Presidential  Elector.  They  cannot  elect  a  constable.  The  very 
name,  The  United  States,  adopted  by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution, 
establishes  the  sovereignty  of  the  States.  Jackson  had  a  plurality  of 
the  votes  of  "The  People  of  the  United  States"  in  1S24 ;  but  John  Quincy 
Adams  became  President.  Tilden  had  a  majority  of  2l0,935  of  the  votes 
of  "The  People  of  the  United  States"  in  1876;  but  Hayes  became  Presi- 

14 


dent  by  the  majority  of  the  electoral  votes.  Cleveland  had  a  majority 
of  98,017  of  the  votes  of  "The  People  of  the  United  States"  in  18SS;  but 
Harrison  became  President  by  the  majority  of  the  electoral  votes.  The 
Courts  have  decided  that  the  presidential  electors  are  STATE  and  not 
Federal  officers,  and  in  most  of  the  States  for  more  than  a  quarter  of 
a  century  after  1TS9,  the  State  legislatures  appointed  the  presidential 
electors,  and  the  people,  therefore,  voted  only  indirectly  for  the  electors 
even,  their  choice  being  expressed  by  their  votes  for  the  members  of 
the  legislature.  It  was  only  after  the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  had 
been  agreed  upon  and  its  language  referred  to  "a  committee  on  style" 
more  than  a  year  after  the  convention  assembled,  that  the  names  of  the 
original  thirteen  States  were  omitted,  and  "We,  the  people  of  the  United 
States"  (that  is,  of  the  States  to  be  united)  was  substituted.  It  was  the 
pen  of  Gouverneur  Morris,  in  the  interest  of  mere  style,  that  made  the 
substitution,  which  Webster  and  his  school  interpret  as  abrogating  the 
sovereignty  of  the  States,  although  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  con- 
sidered it  mere  verbiage  in  the  interest  of  style  (Is  Davis  a  Traitor,  pp. 
60-61),  having  no  effect  on  the  intent  of  the  instrument;  and  Gouverneur 
Morris,  by  the  stroke  of  whose  pen,  according  to  Webster,  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  States  was  abrogated,  said,  years  afterwards,  "The  Con- 
stitution was  a  compact,  not  between  individuals,  but  between  political 
societies,  between  the  people,  not  of  America,  but  of  the  United  States, 
each  enjoying  sovereign  power  and  of  course  equal  rights."  (Life  and 
Writings  of  G.  M.,  Vol.  III.,  p.  193.) 

The  Sovereignty  of  the  United  States  Affirmed. 

Nothing  was  more  fixed  in  the  minds  of  the  framers  of  the  Consti- 
tution, or  more  distinctly  and  constantly  affirmed  by  them  than  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  States.  Alexander  Hamilton  said  the  present  union  is 
"an  association  of  States,  a  confederacy,"  and  that  "the  people  of  New 
York  are  the  sovereigns  of  it."  (Fed.  IX.,  his  address  in  17S9.)  Chan- 
cellor Livingston  said  our  "general  polity  is  a  league  of  States."  (II. 
Elliott  Debates,  274.)  James  Madison  said,  "The  States  are  regarded 
as  distinct  and  Independent  Sovereigns  by  the  Constitution.  (Fed. 
XL.)  Washington  wrote  of  the  Constitution  as  "a  compact  or  treaty," 
and  of  the  same  union  as  formed  by  it  as  "The  New  Confederacy"  (Let- 
ter to  Gen.  Pinckney,  June  28,  17S8 ;  letter'  to  D.  Stuart,  October  17, 
1787.)  Dr.  Franklin  said  that  the  Senate  was  to  secure  in  the  union 
"the  sovereignties  of  the  individual  States  (V.  Elliott  Debates,  266.) 
James  Wilson  said,  "The  sovereignty  is  in  the  people  before  they  make 
a  constitution,  and  remains  in  them  after  it  is  made,"  and  that  the  said 
people  are  the  "thirteen  Independent  Sovereignties."  (Mass.  Senti- 
nel, October  24,  17S7.)  John  Dickinson  called  the  new  political  system 
a  "Confederacy  of  Republics,"  and  recognized  therein  "the  sovereignty  of 
each  State"  (John  Dickinson's  Political  Writings,  II.,  p.  107.)  Gouver- 
neur Morris,  as  already  noted,  said,  "The  Constitution  is  a  compact  be- 
tween political  societies,  each  enjoying  sovereign  powers."  (Life  of 
Morris,  III.,  p.  193.)  Roger  Sherman  said.  "The  Government  was  insti- 
tuted by  a  number  of  sovereign  States."  (Letter  to  John  Adams  in  Vol. 
VII.,  of  Writings  of  J.  A.)     Oliver  Elsworth  called  the  States  "Sovereign 

15 


bodies."  (II.  Elliott  Debates,  197.)  John  Marshall  spoke  of  the  State 
in  the  Union  as  the  "sovereign  power."  (III.  Elliott  Debates,  297,  549.) 
Samuel  Adams  said,  "Each  State  retains  its  sovereignty  in  the  present 
Union."  (Elliott  Debates,  131.)  Gov.  James  Bowdoin  spoke  of  the 
Union  as  "a  confederacy,"  and  of  the  States  as  "distinct  sovereignties." 
(II.  Elliott  Debates.  129.)  James  Iredell,  of  North  Carolina,  after- 
wards on  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  said  that  "the  fed- 
eral senate  was  necessary  to  preserve  completely  the  sovereignty  of 
the  States."  (IV.  •Ellliott  Debates.  133.)  Fisher  Ames  said.  "The 
Senators  represent  the  sovereignty  of  the  States  in  the  QUALITIES  OF 
AMBASSADORS."  (II.  Elliott  Debates,  46.)  Theophilus  Parsons,  the 
celebrated  Chief  Justice  of  Massachusetts,  said  that  "the  Senate  was  de- 
signed to  preserve  the  sovereignty  of  the  States."  (Memoirs  of  Par- 
sons, p.  9S.)  Christopher  Gore  said.  "The  Senate  represents  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  States."  (II.  Ellliott  Debates,  18.)  These  quotations 
might  be  multiplied  indefinitely,  as  showing  what  the  framers  of  the 
Constitution  felt,  said  and  did,  and  these  facts  were  never  questioned 
before  1S30,  when  the  agitation  against  slavery  began.  In  1826  Everett 
wrote  to  Jefferson  that  "the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a  com- 
pact of  Independent  Nations."  To  Washington  Hunt  he  wrote,  May  29, 
I860.  "Our  union  of  co-equal,  Sovereign  States  requires  the  harmony  of 
its  members  and  their  voluntary  combination  in  its  organic  functions." 
John  Quincy  Adams  said  in  his  discourse  on  the  Constitution,  delivered 
in  1S39.  "To  the  people  alone  is  there  reserved  as  well  the  DISSOLVING 
as  the  constituent  powers  of  the  Union,  and  the  people  of  each  State  have 
the  right  to  secede  from  the  confederated  union."  (Republic  of  Repub- 
lics, p.  330.)  William  H.  Seward  at  Cleveland  in  1844.  said.  "This 
Union  must  be  a  voluntary  one  and  not  compulsory.  A  union  upheld  by 
force  would  be  despotism."  And  on  October  20,  1865,  in  an  elaborate 
address  on  the  then  condition  of  things,  he  said,  "This  absolute  existence 
of  the  States  which  constitute  the  republic  is  the  most  palpable  of  all  the 
facts  which  the  American  statesman  has  to  deal  with.  In  a  practical 
sense  the  States  were  before  the  Union  teas.  Our  federal  republic  exists, 
and  henceforth  and  forever,  must  exist  through  the  combination  of  these 
free,  self-existing,  stubborn  States.  They  are  living,  growing,  majestic 
trees,  whose  roots  are  widely  spread  and  interlaced  with  the  soil,  and 
whose  shade  covers  the  earth."     (Republic  of  Republics,  p.  331.) 

And  perhaps  the  most  significant  and  far-reaching  thought  developed 
in  the  Council  of  the  Governors  of  forty-four  States,  assembled  in  the 
East  Room  of  the  White  House  on  invitation  of  President  Roosevelt,  May 
13,  1908,  was  in  the  address  of  the  Hon.  Elihu  Root,  Secretary  of  State, 
who  said  in  part :  "Forty-four  sovereign  States  are  represented  here, 
all  sovereigns,  here  on  invitation  of  the  Executive  of  a  sovereign  Na- 
tion. No  one  can  estimate  the  importance  of  maintaining  each  and  every 
one  of  the  sovereignties  of  the  States,  and  no  one  can  over-estimate  the 
importance  of  maintaining  the  sovereignty  of  the  Nation.  The  Nation 
cannot  perform  functions  of  State  sovereignties.  If  it  were  to  under- 
take to  perform  these  functions,  it  would  break  down.  The  pressure  is 
already  too  heavy  on  the  National  machinery.  I  feel  deeply  impressed 
with  the  idea  that  the  forty-six  sovereign  States,  in  the  performance  of 

16 


their  duties  of  government  are  lagging  behind  the  stage  of  development 
which  other  sovereignties  on  earth  have  reached.  If  you  look  at  the  in- 
ternational life  of  the  world,  you  will  see  that  the  correspondence  be- 
tween nations  is  continually  increasing.  Scores  and  hundreds  of  confer- 
ences and  congresses  are  being  held  under  government  auspices  to  reg- 
ulate the  action  of  the  different  nations  of  the  earth.  All  the  nations  of 
Europe  are  considering  the  effect  which  their  action  shall  have  on  the 
people  of  each  other  government.  Now,  our  States  in  the  exercise  of 
their  sovereignty,  in  the  exercise  of  the  powers  reserved  to  them, 
rest  under  the  same  kind  of  duty,  a  duty  which  forbids  the  people  of  any 
State  to  live  unto  themselves  alone.  Why  should  not  the  powers  re- 
served to  the  State  sovereignties  be  exercised  by  these  sov- 
ereignties with  a  wise  regard  for  the  common  interest,  under  a  firm  re- 
solve to  make  it  wholly  unnecessary  that  this  continual  pressure  to  force 
the  national  government  into  the  performance  of  duties  which  the  States 
should  perform  should  continue?  I  regard  this  meeting  as  the  beginning 
of  an  era  in  which  the  States  will  exercise  their  sovereign  powers  on  a 
higher  plane  of  patriotism  than  ever  before."  This  sounds  as  if  Root 
were  addressing  the  Convention  of  1787,  or  Madison  the  Conference  of 
Governors  in  1908. 

The  Conditional  Entrance  of  the  States  Into  the  Union. 

The  conditions  on  which  Virginia,  New  York  and  Rhode  Island  went 
into  the  Union  are  very  significant.  Virginia  was  then  much  the  largest 
State  in  the  Union,  her  population  in  1790  being  747,610 ;  New  York,  with 
a  population  of  340,120,  was  reckoned  among  the  smaller  States,  but  her 
central  position  made  her  accession  especially  important.  Rhode  Island 
was  the  smallest  State. 

The  preamble  of  Virginia's  ratification  of  the  Constitution  is  as  fol- 
lows: 

"We,  the  delegates  of  the  people  of  Virginia,  duly  elected  in  pursu- 
ance of  a  recommendation  from  the  General  Assembly,  and  now  met  in 
Convention,  having  fully  and  freely  investigated  and  discussed  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  Federal  Convention,  and  being  prepared,  as  well  as  the 
most  mature  deliberation  hath  enabled  us,  to  decide  thereon,  do,  in  the 
name  and  in  behalf  of  the  people  of  Virginia,  declare  and  make  known, 
that  the  powers  granted  under  the  Constitution,  being  derived  from  the 
people  of  the  United  States,  be  resumed  by  them  whensoever  the 
same  shall  be  perverted  to  their  injury  or  oppression,  and  that  every 
power,  not  granted  thereby,  remains  with  them,  and  at  their  will;  that, 
therefore,  no  right  of  any  denomination  can  be  cancelled,  abridged,  re- 
strained, or  modified,  by  the  Congress,  by  the  Senate  or  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives, acting  in  any  capacity,  by  the  President,  or  any  depart- 
ment officer  of  the  United  States,  except  in  those  instances  in  which 
power  is  given  by  the  Constitution  for  those  purposes." 

In  this  statement  of  the  conditions  under  which  Virginia  entered  the 
Union,  it  is  significant  that  the  word  secede  or  withdraw  is  not  used. 
The  use  of  either  of  these  words  would  have  been  conceding  too  much  to 
the  Union.    The  condition  made  by  Virginia  was  that  she  should  resume 

17 


the  powers  only  conditionally  delegated,  if  these  powers  should  be  used 
injuriously  or  oppressively  by  the  general  government. 

On  page  12  of  E.  P.  Powell's  "Nullification  and  Secession  in  the 
United  States,"  it  is  stated  that  New  York  voted  the  ratification  of 
the  Constitution  on  the  declared  premise  that  "the  powers  of  govern- 
ment may  be  resumed  by  the  people  (of  New  York)  whenever  it  shall 
become  necessary  to  their  happiness." 

It  thus  appears  that  New  York  went  into  the  Union  on  the  condition 
that  the  powers  delegated  to  the  general  government  should  be  resumed 
when  it  became  necessary  to  her  happiness  to  resume  them. 

On  page  55  of  his  "Southern  States  of  the  American  Union,"  Dr. 
J.  L.  M.  Curry  states  that  "Rhode  Island  reserved  in  terms  the  right  to 
withdraw  from  the  Union  whenever  her  interests  demanded  it." 

If  any  one  of  the  parties  to  a  contract  may  withdraw  at  will,  the  right 
of  withdrawal  at  will  must  be  conceded  to  every  party  to  the  contract. 
Not  one  only,  but  three  parties  to  the  constitutional  compact  entered  it 
with  the  right  distinctly  reserved  to  resume  the  powers  delegated  if  these 
powers  should  be  used  to  their  injury  or  oppression. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  add  the  opinion  of  two  intelligent  foreign- 
ers, both  deep  and  earnest  students  of  the  American  government,  with  a 
better  perspective  than  any  American  can  get. 

De  Tocqueville,  in  his  "Democracy  in  America,"  published  in  1835, 
speaks  as  follows  on  pages  393,  394,  395,  Vol.  I.  (World's  Great  Classics, 
Colonial  Press  1899),  "However  strong  a  government  may  be,  it  cannot 
easily  escape  from  a  principle  which  it  has  once  admitted  as  the  founda- 
tion of  its  Constitution.  The  Union  was  formed  by  the  voluntary  agree- 
ment of  the  States,  and  in  uniting  together  they  have  not  forfeited  their 
nationality.  If  one  of  the  States  chose  to  withdraw  its  name  from  the 
contract,  it  would  be  difficult  to  disprove  its  right  of  doing  so  and  the 
Federal  Government  would  have  no  means  of  maintaining  its  claims  di- 
rectly either  by  force  or  by  right."  (In  coercing  a  state)  "the  Govern- 
ment would  be  exerting  a  force  not  derived  from  itself,  but  contrary  to 
its  nature."  "The  present  Union  will  last  only  as  long  as  the  States 
which  compose  it  choose  to  continue  members  of  the  Confederation." 

In  his  "American  Commonwealth,"  3d  Edition,  1900,  p.  17,  James 
Brice  speaks  as  follows :  ""The  American  Federal  Republic  is  itself  a 
commonwealth  as  well  as  a  union  of  commonwealths,  because  it  claims 
directly  the  obedience  of  every  citizen  and  acts  immediately  on  him 
through  its  courts  and  executive  officers.  Still  less  are  its  minor  com- 
munities, the  States,  mere  subdivisions  of  the  Union,  mere  creatures  of 
the  National  Government,  like  the  counties  of  England  or  the  depart- 
ments of  France.  They  have  over  their  citizens  an  authority  which  is 
their  own,  and  not  delegated  by  the  central  government.  They  have  not 
been  called  into  being  by  that  government.  They,  that  is  the  older  ones 
among  them,  existed  before  it.  They  could  exist  without  it.  *  *  *  It 
might  be  destroyed  and  they  might  survive  as  independent,  self-govern- 
ing communities." 

In  the  light  of  these  historic  verities  what  would  the  trainers  of  the 
Constitution  think  of  Lincoln's  extra  constitutional  claim  in  his  first  in- 

18 


augural  that  the  States  occupy  the  same  relative  position  to  the  general 
government  which  the  counties  occupy  to  a  State? 

The  Theory  of  Secession  Affiemed  by  the  Northern  States. 

Having  discussed  the  THEORY  of  secession  as  the  trainers  of  the. 
Constitution  understood  and  promulgated  it,  let  us  proceed  to  discuss 
the  theory  and  PRACTICE  of  nullification  and  secession  since  1789.  No 
Southern  State  has  ever  nullified  a  single  article  of  requirement  of  the 
Constitution.  In  1832  South  Carolina  threatened  to  nullify  an  act  of 
Congress  imposing  unjust  and  oppressive  taxation  laws,  as  the  Fathers 
had  opposed  unjust  taxation  in  1776  and  to  exercise  her  inalienable  right 
of  withdrawal  from  the  Union  unless  these  laws  were  made  less  oppres- 
sive; but  President  Jackson  made  the  adjustment,  the  matter  was  set- 
tied  amicably ;  it  was  a  complaint,  not  against  any  action  of  the  Consti- 
tution, but  only  against  an  act  of  Congress,  and  it  was  made  only  once. 
Before  1SG0  fourteen  Northern  States  had  nullified  the  fugitive  slave  law, 
which  was  as  much  a  part  of  the  Constitution  as  the  President  or  Con- 
gress, and  these  acts  of  nullification  were  denounced  by  Daniel  Webster 
in  1850  as  distinct  acts  of  treason. 

In  1S03,  it  was  feared  by  New  England  that  the  Louisiana  purchase 
would  diminish  the  influence  of  their  section  of  the  Union ;  and  Senator 
Pickering,  of  Massachusetts,  strongly  advocated  the  formation  of  a 
"Northern  Confederacy,"  and  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  passed 
the  following  resolution :  "Resolved,  That  the  annexation  of  Louisiana 
to  the  Union  transcends  the  constitutional  power  of  the  Government  of 
the  United  States.  It  formed  a  new  Confederacy  to  which  the  States 
united  by  the  former  compact  are  not  bound  to  adhere."    On  January  14, 

1811,  in  the  debate  in  Congress  on  the  admission  of  Louisiana,  Josiah 
Quincy  of  Massachusetts,  said,  "If  this  bill  (for  the  admission  of  Lou- 
isiana) passes,  it  is  my  deliberate  opinion  that  it  is  virtually  a  dissolu- 
tion of  the  Union;  that  it  will  free  the  States  from  their  moral  obliga- 
tion, and  as  it  will  be  the  right  of  all,  so  it  will  be  the  duty  of  some,  to 
prepare  for  separation,  amicably  if  they  can,  violently  if  they  must." 

The  Embargo  Act,  passed  by  Congress,  caused  so  much  dissatisfaction 
during  Jefferson's  second  administration  that  it  was  repealed  in  1S09 ; 
but  not  until  John  Quincy  Adams  declared  that  if  it  was  not  repealed, 
the  New  England  States  would  withdraw  from  the  Union  and  had  opened 
negotiations  with  Great  Britain  toward  that  end  (Encyclopedia  Amer- 
icana, Embargo.) 

The  repeal  of  the  Embargo  Act  in  1809  did  not  relieve  the  people  of 
the  United  States  from  the  unjust  and  arbitrary  conduct  of  England. 
She  did  not  revoke  her  Orders  of  Council ;  she  still  continued  to  search 
our  ships,  blockade  our  ports  and  impress  our  seamen,  until  at  last  an 
indignant  people  forced  the  hand  of  President  Madison,  and  on  June  18, 

1812,  we  entered  into  our  second  War  of  Independnce.  But  the  ship 
owners  of  New  England  suffered  hardship,  and  the  New  England  Feder- 
alists, under  the  leadership  of  Timothy  Pickering,  late  Senator  from 
Massachusetts,  opposed  the  prosecution  of  this  second  War  of  Indepen- 
dence in  every  way.  We  find  in  "Familiar  Letters  on  Public  Charac- 
ters," p.  275,  an  account  of  a  public  meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall,  July  14, 1814, 

19 


denouncing  the  War,  in  which  Josiah  Quincy  and  Harrison  Gray  Otis 
were  the  principal  speakers.  The  plan  of  a  Northern  Confederacy,  pro- 
posed by  Pickering,  Plumer,  Griswold  and  Burr  in  1804,  and  threatened 
in  180S  and  1809,  was  revived.  This  resulted  in  the  famous  Hartford 
Convention,  held  on  invitation  of  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts,  which 
on  October  18,  1814,  "appointed  twelve  delegates  to  meet  and  confer  with 
delegates  from  other  States  of  New  England,  or  any  of  them,  on  subjects 
of  their  public  grievances  and  concerns."  On  this  invitation,  Connecti- 
cut appointed  seven  delegates  and  Rhode  Island  four.  These  twenty- 
four  delegates  met  in  Hartford,  December  15,  1S14,  and  admitted  two 
delegates  from  New  Hampshire  and  one  from  Vermont,  every  New  Eng- 
land State  being  represented.  This  convention  adopted  the  doctrine  that 
the  States  had  the  right  to  nullify  the  laws  of  Congress,  and  advised 
separate  action  of  the  States  in  matters  confided  by  the  Constitution  to 
the  General  Government.  This  report  was  transmitted  to  the  Governor 
on  January  18,  1815,  was  laid  before  the  Legislature,  which,  on  January 
27th,  adopted  a  resolution  highly  approving  the  proceedings  of  the  Con- 
vention, and  authorizing  the  Governor  and  Council  to  appoint  three  com- 
missioners to  go  immediately  to  Washington  and  make  application  for 
some  arrangement  by  which  "The  State  of  Massachusetts,  separately  or 
in  concert  with  the  neighboring  States,  may  be  able  to  assume  the  de- 
fense of  their  territories  AGAINST  THE  ENEMY"  (that  is  the  General 
Government.)  In  all  this  opposition  to  the  Embargo  and  to  the  second 
War  for  Independence  against  England,  Daniel  Webster  took  an  active 
and  leading  part.  In  July,  1812,  he  made  a  speech  against  the  War  with 
England,  and  in  August  of  the  same  year  he  wrote  the  "Rockingham 
Memorial,"  in  which  he  threatened  secession  from  the  Union  (Writings 
and  Speeches  of  Webster,  Vol.  XV.,  p.  598.)  In  December,  1814,  Webster 
said  in  Congress  that  Congress  had  no  power  to  raise  armies  by  calling 
out  the  militia  against  the  will  of  the  States,  and  taught  resistance  to 
the  National  Government  in  these  words,  "It  is  the  solemn  duty  of  the 
State  Governments  to  protect  their  own  authority  over  their  own  militia, 
and  to  interpose  between  their  own  citizens  and  arbitrary  power.  I  shall 
exhort  them  to  exercise  their  rights  of  providing  for  the  security  of  their 
liberties." 

Col.  Josiah  H.  Benton,  Jr.,  in  "A  Notable  Libel  Case,"  says,  "There  is 
no  word  or  intimation  here  of  the  power  of  the  Federal  Judiciary  to  de- 
cide this  and  any  similar  question.  There  is  only  an  unqualified  appeal 
to  the  doctrine  of  States  Rights  and  a  practical  declaration  of  the  right 
of  the  States  to  nullify  the  Acts  of  Congress."  There  is  no  wonder  that 
such  words  were  followed  within  a  month  by  the  declaration  of  the  Hart- 
ford Convention  that,  "In  case  of  infractions  of  the  Constitution  affecting 
the  sovereignty  of  a  State  and  the  liberty  of  its  people,  it  is  not  only  the 
right  but  the  duty  of  such  a  State  to  interpose  its  authority  for  their 
protection  in  the  manner  best  calculated  to  secure  that  end.  *  *  *  In 
such  emergencies  the  States  which  have  no  common  umpire,  must  be 
their  own  judges  and  execute  their  own  declarations." 

Albert  Bushnell  Hart,  professor  of  History  in  Harvard  University, 
speaks  as  follows  on  page  284  of  his  "Essentials  of  American  History :" 
"When  the  President  of  the  United  States  called  on  the  States  for  a  cer- 

20 


tain  number  of  militia  (during  the  War  of  1812),  New  Hampshire,  Mas- 
sachusetts, Rhode  Island,  Connecticut  and  New  Jersey  refused  to  send 
any,"  although  the  London  Times  said  of  American  war  ships,  "If  they 
fight  they  are  sure  to  conquer ;  if  they  fly,  they  are  sure  to  escape." 
(Essentials  of  American  History,  p.  284.)  On  the  same  page  Prof.  Hart 
says  again :  "In  1811  Josiah  Quincy,  a  New  England  member  of  Con- 
gress, roundly  threatened  that  New  England  would  secede  if  Louisiana 
was  made  a  State." 

Moreover,  Webster  voted  constantly  with  Pickering,  then  in  the 
House,  and  acted  at  all  times  with  the  ultra  Federals,  who,  as  Mr. 
Adams  charged,  undoubtedly  proposed  in  1804,  and  again  in  1808,  and 
again  in  1814,  to  break  up  the  Union,  and  form  a  separate  Confederacy 
of  New  England  and  other  States.  (See  letters  of  Pickering  to  Theodore 
Lyman,  February  11,  1804 ;  to  Stephen  Higginson  December  24,  1803 ;  to 
Bufus  King,  March  4,  1S04 ;  and  to  other  correspondence  on  the  subject 
of  a  Northern  Confederacy,  printed  in  Henry  Cabot  Lodge's  Life  and 
Letters  of  George  Cabot.)  Webster  was  a  politician,  and  secession  was 
popular  in  New  England.  Even  after  the  British  had  captured  Wash- 
ington, had  burnt  our  Capitol,  torn  down  our  flag  and  were  red-handed 
in  the  blood  of  our  soldiers  and  sailors,  in  the  interest  of  secession  from 
the  United  States  and  of  annexation  to  England,  with  whom  New  Eng- 
land proposed  a  private  peace  during  the  War  of  1812,  Webster  voted 
against  taxes  to  carry  on  this  second  War  of  Independence.  These  facts 
are  not  mentioned  by  any  of  Webster's  biographers  except  Curtis,  and  he 
slurs  them  over  with  a  word,  Webster's  purpose  apparently  being  to 
have  them  suppressed.  Cromwell  insisted  on  turning  the  side  of  his  face 
with  the  wart  on  it  towards  the  portrait  painter.  Webster's  biographers 
tried  to  conceal  the  wart,  so  to  speak,  on  their  hero's  character,  and 
when  Theodore  Lyman,  Jr.,  published  the  facts  in  182S  from  the  records 
of  the  Courts,  Webster  prosecuted  him  for  criminal  libel.  The  case  was 
prosecuted  with  personal  and  political  rancor  as  well,  Webster  and  his 
friends  being  bitter  against  Lyman,  because  he  had  dared  to  support 
Jackson  against  Adams,  Jackson  representing  in  the  minds  of  New 
England,  everything  bad  and  dangerous.  The  prosecution  was  instituted 
iu  the  Supreme  Judicial  Court,  in  which  Webster  could  testify  and  Ly- 
man could  not,  as  he  could  have  done  in  the  lower  court,  before  which 
the  case  properly  should  have  come.  But  with  everything  in  Webster's 
favor,  Lyman  was  cleared,  and  Webster  was  virtually  convicted  of  trying 
for  years  to  break  up  the  Union  by  secession  or  war,  and  of  attempting 
re-annexation  to  Great  Britain,  this  being  the  popular  side  to  take  in 
New  England  at  the  time,  or  Webster  would  never  have  taken  it.  After 
Webster's  virtual  conviction,  the  tide  of  popular  feeling  turned  in  Ly- 
man's favor,  and  he  was  elected  mayor  of  Boston  without  opposition  in 
1834  and  again  in  1835. 

And  yet  Webster  has  been  canonized  as  the  great  apostle  and  saint 
of  Nationalism,  and  as  the  great  expounder  of  the  Constitution  as  para- 
mount law,  and  as  abrogating  the  rights  of  the  States,  as  the  fathers  of 
the  Republic  described  and  revered  them.  "The  people  of  New  England," 
says  Col.  Benton  (page  108  of  A  Notable  Libel  Case),  "yielded  slowly 
and  with  extreme  reluctance  to  the  power  of  the  National  Government 

21 


under  the  Constitution.  The  Federal  Union  was  good  enough  as  long 
as  it  worked  good  to  their  local  interests ;  but  when  it  did  not,  they 
deemed  it  entirely  patriotic  to  consider  the  question  of  its  dissolution. 
Hence,  the  Northern  Confederacy  scheme  of  1S04,  the  violent  and  almost 
forcible  opposition  to  the  Embargo  of  1S09,  and  the  determined  opposition 
to  the  War  of  1S12,  culminating  in  the  proceedings  of  the  Hartford  Con- 
vention of  1S14." 

Again  as  late  as  1S44,  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  passed  an 
ordinance  of  secession,  declaring  that  "the  annexation  of  Texas  tended 
to  drive  the  States  into  a  dissolution  of  the  Union,"  and  that  "Massa- 
chusetts was  determined  to  submit  her  undelegated  powers  to  no  body  of 
men  on  earth ;"  and  again  in  1S4S  Massachusetts  talked  freely  and 
boldly  of  nullifying  the  Constitution  by  refusing  to  send  a  single  soldier 
to  uphold  the  flag  in  what  she  considered  an  unjust  war  with  Mexico, 
though  afterwards  she  did  send  one  regiment. 

To  these  repeated  acts  or  threats  of  disunion  by  the  people  of  New 
England  before  1SG0,  we  may  add  that  William  Lloyd  Garrison's  "Liber- 
ator," established  in  1S31  as  the  organ  of  the  unconditional  abolitionists, 
constantly  took  the  ground  that  the  Constitution  was  a  "league  with 
death  and  a  covenant  with  hell,"  because  it  recognized  the  right  to  hold 
slaves ;  and  the  abolition  of  slavery  was  urged,  although  Mr.  Garrison 
held  that  "slavery  could  be  abolished  only  by  the  dissolution  of  the 
Union." 

The  following  resolutions  were  passed  at  this  time  by  the  American 
Anti-Slavery  Society,  composed  of  but  recent  descendants  of  the  New 
England  slave  traders  (Is  Davis  a  Traitor?  p.  149)  :  "Resolved,  That 
secession  from  the  United  States  Government  is  the  duty  of  every  Aboli- 
tionist. Resolved,  That  the  only  exodus  of  the  slave  to  freedom  is  over 
the  remains  of  the  present  American  Church  and  the  grave  of  the  pres- 
ent Union.  Resolved,  That  the  Abolitionists  should  make  it  one  of  the 
primary  objects  of  this  agitation  to  dissolve  the  American  Union." 

The  New  York  Tribune  became  poetical  on  the  subject,  and  addressed 
tbe  American  Flag  as  follows : 

"Tear  down  that  flaunting  lie; 
Half  mast  the  starry  flag! 
Insult  no  sunny  sky 

With  hate's  polluted  rag." 

And  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  the  great  apostle  and  high  priest  of  the 
unconditional  Abolitionists,  called  the  Constitution  "only  that  antiquated 
parchment." 

This  sectional,  compact  and  extra-constitutional  minority  elected 
Lincoln,  during  whose  administration  the  too  centrifugal  Constitution 
and  the  too  voluntary  union  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Republic  came  to  its 
foredoomed  end,  because  it  was  too  centrifugal  and  too  voluntary  to  pro- 
tect and  conserve  the  greatly  expanded  national  life  and  to  meet  the 
vastly  increased  national  and  international  responsibilities  which  de- 
veloped during  the  seventy  years  following  17S9. 

Secession  as  Taught  at  West  Point. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  the  theory  of  secession  as  one  of  the  reserved 


rights  of  the  States  should  have  prevailed  more  generally  in  the  North 
than  in  the  South,  and  that  the  practice  of  secession  should  have  been 
much  more  frequently  advocated  in  the  North  than  in  the  South,  when 
we  consider  that  the  right  of  secession  was  taught  officially  by  the  United 
States  Government  at  West  Point  up  to  about  1S40  from  Rawle's  View 
of  the  Constitution,  which  was  the  text-book  on  Constitutional  Law  in 
the  Military  Academy.  In  this  United  States  Text-Book  the  following 
language  occurs: 

"If  a  faction  should  attempt  to  subvert  the  Government  of  a  State 
for  the  purpose  of  destroying  its  republican  form,  the  national  power  of 
the  Union  could  be  called  forth  to  subdue  it.  Yet  it  is  not  to  be  under- 
stood that  its  interposition  would  be  justifiable  if  a  State  should  deter- 
mine to  retire  from  the  Union."  (p.  2S9.)  "It  depends  on  the  State 
itself  whether  it  will  continue  a  member  of  the  Union.  To  deny  this 
right  would  be  inconsistent  with  the  principle  on  which  all  our  political 
systems  are  founded,  which  is,  that  the  people  have  in  all  cases  the  right 
to  determine  how  they  shall  be  governed."  (p.  289.)  "The  States  may 
then  wholly  withdraw  from  the  Union."  (p.  290.)  "If  a  majority  of  the 
people  of  a  State  deliberately  and  peaceably  resolve  to  relinquish  the  re- 
publican form  of  government,  they  cease  to  be  members  of  the  Union." 
(p.  292.)  "The  secession  of  a  State  from  the  Union  depends  on  the  will 
of  the  people  of  such  State."  (p.  295.)  "In  any  manner  by  which  se- 
cession is  to  take  place,  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the  act  should 
be  deliberate,  clear  and  unequivocal."  (p.  296.)  "The  people  of  a  State 
may  have  reason  to  complain  in  respect  to  the  acts  of  the  general  gov- 
ernment ;  they  may,  in  such  cases,  invest  some  of  their  own  officers  with 
the  power  of  negotiation,  and  may  declare  an  absolute  secession  in  case 
of  failure.  The  secession  in  such  cases  must  be  distinctly  and  peremp- 
torily declared  to  take  place,  and  in  such  case,  as  the  case  of  uncondi- 
tional secession,  the  previous  ligament  with  the  Union  would  be  legiti- 
mately and  fairly  destroyed."  (p.  296.)  "It  was  foreseen  that  there 
would  be  a  natural  tendency  to  increase  the  number  of  the  States.  It 
was  also  known  that  a  State  might  withdraw  itself."  (p.  207.)  "To 
withdraw  from  the  Union  is  a  solemn,  serious  act."  "Whenever  it  may 
appear  expedient  to  the  people  of  a  State  to  withdraw  from  the  Union, 
it  must  be  manifested  in  a  direct  and  unequivocal  manner."     (p.  298.) 

And  the  instruction  given  at  West  Point,  from  1825  to  1840,  as  to  the 
nature  of  a  personal  allegiance,  from  "Rawle  on  the  Constitution,"  is 
especially  significant: 

"This  right  (of  secession)  must  be  considered  an  ingredient  in  the 
original  composition  of  the  general  government,  and  the  doctrine  here- 
tofore presented  in  regard  to  the  indefeasible  nature  of  personal  alleg- 
iance is  so  far  qualified  in  respect  to  allegiance  to  the  United  States.  It 
was  observed  that  the  reciprocal  relations  of  protection  and  allegiance 
might  cease  in  certain  events,  and  it  was  further  observed  that  allegiance 
would  necessarily  cease  in  case  of  the  dissolution  of  the  society  (the 
Union,  in  that  case)  to  which  it  was  due."     (p.  289-200.) 

It  thus  appears  that  the  West  Point  cadets  were  taught  by  the  United 
States  Government  at  West  Point  that  the  Union  was  dissoluble,  and 

23 


that,  if  it  should  be  dissolved,  allegiance  to  the  Union  ceased,  reverting 
to  the  States  by  which  the  Union  had  been  created. 

And  when  at  the  beginning  of  a  great  war  Robert  E.  Lee,  who  had 
been  thus  taught,  subordinated  his  loyalty  to  the  flag,  under  which  he 
had  served  so  long  and  with  such  distinction,  to  his  sense  of  duty  and  to 
his  native  State;  and  when  he  stopped  his  ears  to  the  call  of  ambition 
from  the  strong  and  opened  them  to  the  cry  for  help  from  the  weak ; 
when  he  refused  to  accept  the  command  of  the  armies  of  the  United 
States  and  took  a  subordinate  position  offered  him  by  Virginia,  he  set 
an  example  of  self-sacrifice  and  devotion  to  duty  for  duty's  sake  un- 
equaled  in  the  history  of  soldiers  and  of  armies. 

It  is  an  historic  fact  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  not  tried  for  treason, 
because,  under  several  States'  rights  decisions  of  Chief  Justice  Chase, 
before  he  became  Chief  Justice,  and  under  the  States'  rights  instruction 
received  at  West  Point  from  "Rawle  on  the  Constitution,"  which  was  to 
be  put  in  evidence  if  the  trial  had  occurred,  he  could  not  have  been  con- 
victed. 

It  would  foster  harmony  between  the  sections  if  the  people  of  the 
North  would  acquaint  themselves  with  these  historic  verities ;  if  they 
would  cease  to  call  a  war  a  rebellion  which  President  Lincoln  in  his  fa- 
mous Thanksgiving  Proclamation  of  November,  1863,  called  "this  la- 
mentable strife  in  which  we  are  unavoidably  engaged ;"  if  they  would 
realize  that  the  Confederates  were  neither  rebels  nor  traitors  and  that 
there  were  good  and  solid,  historical  and  constitutional  grounds  for  the 
action  of  the  Southern  States  in  1S61  on  the  belief  that  their  patriotism 
should  centre  around  the  STATES  rather  than  around  the  UNION  of 
States,  around  the  PLURES  which  had  created  the  Union  rather  than 
around  the  Union  which  the  Plures  had  created  in  17S9  and  had  dis- 
solved in  1S61,  justly  and  legally  according  to  the  conditions  of  the 
original  compact  as  its  framers  created  it,  and  as  the  whole  country 
iuterpreted  it  during  the  first  forty  years  of  the  existence  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. 

And  it  is  interesting  to  knoio  and  very  pertinent  to  this  discussion  to 
note,  that  on  January  11,  1907,  the  United  States  Senate  changed  the  of- 
ficial name  of  the  War  of  the  Rebellion  to  The  Civil  War  (Congressional 
Globe  of  even  date.)  The  Senate,  as  a  Committee  of  the  Whole,  had 
under  consideration  "A  bill  (S.  967)  granting  pensions  to  certain  enlisted 
men,  soldiers  and  officers,  who  served  in  the  War  of  the  Rebellion." 

Senator  Teller,  of  Colorado,  had  used  the  term  rebellion  twice,  basing 
his  contention  on  what  he  expressd  as  his  desire  that  the  truth  of  history 
should  be  spoken  and  recorded.  Senator  A.  O.  Bacon,  of  Georgia,  said, 
"*  *  *  I  rise  to  say  that  I  do  not  think  the  term  rebellion  is  a  proper 
designation  for  the  War  (between  the  sections),  nor  have  I  any  belief 
or  apprehension  that  history  will  so  record  it.  If  it  is  not  a  proper  des- 
ignation, the  word  rebellion  should  be  stricken  out  and  the  words  Civil 
War  should  be  substituted."  After  some  discussion.  Senator  Bacon's 
contention  prevailed,  and  by  the  action  of  the  United  States  Senate,  the 
official  name  for  the  war  between  the  sections  shall  henceforward  be 
THE  CIVIL  WAR. 

In  consideration  of  all  the  facts  of  the  case,  which  cannot  be  gainsaid 

24 


or  denied,  the  words  rebel,  rebellion,  traitor  and  treason  should  disap- 
pear, and  NATIONAL  AMERICANS  should  no  longer  do  injustice  to 
each  other's  motives,  as  every  one  who  took  up  arms  on  either  side  of 
the  War  between  the  Sections  did  so  in  obedience  to  the  call  to  arms  by 
his  STATE,  to  which  his  primary  and  ultimate  allegiance  was  due,  ac- 
cording to  the  theory  of  the  founders  of  the  Government  and  of  their 
successors  till  1860,  and  according  to  the  official  instruction  given  by  the 
Government  itself  at  West  Point  to  those  who  were  to  command  its 
armies. 

II.    The  Practice  or  Secession  by  the  U.  S.  Government. 

Having  discussed  the  attitude  of  the  trainers  of  the  Constitution  and 
of  the  people  of  the  North,  and  especially  of  New  England,  towards  the 
THEORY  of  secession,  let  us  proceed  to  discuss  the  PRACTICE  of  se- 
cession as  exercised  or  supported  by  the  Government  of  the  United 
States. 

The  United  States  Government  has  been  a  party  to  six  acts  of  seces- 
sion since  177G.  The  first  secession,  from  England,  of  which  the  United 
States  Government  was  born,  and  the  second  act  of  secession,  from  "The 
Articles  of  Confederation  and  Perpetual  Union,"  of  which  "The  more 
perfect  Union  of  the  Constitution"  was  born,  have  already  been  referred 
to,  and  the  fact  that  no  duration  of  time  was  specified  in  "The  New  Ar- 
ticles of  Union"  carries  with  it  the  right  of  withdrawal  from  it  at  will, 
an  in  every  compact  between  persons,  States  or  nations  in  all  ages  and 
among  all  people  of  all  races,  and  settles  legally,  definitely  and  conclus- 
ively the  abstract  right  of  secession  as  the  framers  of  the  Constitution 
viewed  in  1779.  The  first  secession  was  bloody.  The  second  secession 
was  bloodless.  The  third  secession,  the  second  in  which  the  United 
States  Government  was  involved  with  armed  men,  was  that  of  Texas 
from  Mexico,  through  which  we  got  our  Pacific  coast  and  became  an  in- 
teroceanic  power  with  the  most  impregnable  continental  position  among 
men.  By  the  fifth  act  of  secession,  the  fourth  supported  by  armed  men, 
that  of  Cuba  from  Spain,  we  got  our  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Islands,  and 
became  a  World  Power,  late  enough  in  our  history,  but  not  too  late.  By 
the  sixth  act  of  secession,  the  fifth  supported  by  our  armed  men,  we  got 
our  Panama  Belt,  the  most  far-reaching  National  and  International 
event  in  our  history  since  the  acquisition  of  our  Pacific  Coast.  The  third 
secession,  that  of  the  Southern  from  the  Northern  States  in  1861,  though 
in  strict  accordance  with  the  compact  of  17S9,  was  suppressed  by  the 
Armies  and  Navies  of  the  United  States.  But  in  dealing  with  it,  the 
United  States  Government  itself  made  the  strongest  possible  pronounce- 
ment in  favor  of  secession  as  an  accomplished  fact.  When  the  sword 
decided  that  we,  and  the  fathers,  and  New  England  up  to  1850  were  all 
wrong,  that  the  teachings  of  the  United  States  Government  at  West 
Point  were  false  and  that  the  Union  had  never  been  dissolved  and  could 
never  be  dissolved,  the  victors  dissolved  a  union  which  they  had  them- 
selves declared  indissoluble ;  a  third  of  the  States  of  this  inseparable 
union  were  declared  to  be  out  of  the  union ;  the  dissolution  of  the  union 
which  the  Southern  States  had  failed  to  secure  through  the  constitutional 
secession  of  1861,  was  achieved  by  the  extra-  and  super-constitutional 

25 


f 


dictum  of  the  United  States  Government  in  1865 ;  the  now  seceded  States 
were  treated  as  conquered  provinces  and  lived  under  a  military  govern- 
ment, contrary  to  the  decision  of  the  sword  in  18G5  that  the  union  was 
indissoluble,  contrary  to  the  Constitution  of  17S9  and  contrary  to  all  the 
traditions  and  antecedents  of  the  English-speaking  race  since  the  mili- 
tary despotism  of  William  the  Bastard ;  and  were  restored  to  the  Union 
only  over  the  extra-  and  super-constitutional  barrier  of  suffrage  for 
ALL  black  men,  literate  and  illiterate  alike,  although  throughout  the 
Northern  States  the  ballot  was  denied  to  ALL  illiterate  black  men,  to 
ALL  illiterate  white  men,  to  ALL  red  men,  to  ALL  yellow  men ;  and 
later  to  ALL  black  men  in  Porto  Rico,  to  ALL  brown  men  in  the  Philip- 
pines, and  to  enough  brown  men  in  Hawaii  to  turn  the  Island  over  to 
the  white  men,  and  the  ballot  is  still  denied  to  all  these  classes,  in  the 
Northern  States,  and  in  our  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Islands.  By  the  nulli- 
fication of  the  foredoomed  Constitution  of  17S9  in  passing  laws  in  four- 
teen States  before  1S60  against  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves,  which 
rendition  was  as  much  a  part  of  the  Constitution  as  the  President  or 
Congress ;  by  the  nullification  of  the  Constitution  of  17S9  in  the  emanci- 
pation proclamation,  in  direct  opposition  to  one  of  its  most  distinct  pro- 
visions, and  indirect  opposition  to  Lincoln's  solemn  promse  in  his  first 
inaugural  not  to  interfere  with  slavery  where  it  existed ;  by  the  entire 
abnegation  of  the  Constitution  of  17S9  and  of  the  conception  which  its 
trainers  had  of  the  work  of  their  hands  in  acting  on  the  assumption  that 
the  STATES  which  created  the  Union  called  the  UNITED  STATES  had 
no  more  power  in  this  Union  than  the  counties  have  in  a  State ;  by  the 
abnegation  of  the  Constitution  of  17S9,  however  foredoomed  it  might 
have  been,  in  coercing  sovereign  STATES,  by  the  abnegation  of  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  Fathers  (however  foredoomed  it  might  have  been  and 
however  necessary  its  destruction  as  the  Fathers  conceived  and  promul- 
gated it  might  have  become),  in  establishing  a  military  despotism  over 
one-third  of  the  STATES,  the  determinate  and  constitutional,  but  fore- 
doomed, because  too  centrifugal  United  States  Government  of  the 
Fathers,  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  the  indeterminate  and  extra-  and 
super-constitutional  U.  S.  Government  of  the  present  is  committed  to  the 
future,  because  the  conditions  in  1.8G0  constituted  a  Gordian  Knot  which 
conditions  Lincoln  must  needs  be  the  Alexander  to  solve  with  the 
SWORD. 

III.     Secession  as  Attempted  by  the  Confederate  States. 

Having  shown  that  secession  in  theory  was  legal  and  constitutional, 
and  that  the  theory  was  abundantly  affirmed  by  the  practice  of  the 
United  States  Government  in  the  six  acts  of  secession  in  which  the 
Government  has  been  involved,  once  without  armed  men,  five  times  with 
armed  men,  sustaining  it  five  times  and  suppressing  it  once,  let  us  discuss 
secession  as  attempted  by  the  Southern  States. 

An  armed  conflict  between  the  reserved  rights  of  the  thirteen  Inde- 
pendent Republics  acknowledged  by  Great  Britain  in  1783  and  the  rights, 
powers  and  necessities  of  the  general  government  was  inevitable  probably 
from  the  first.  Madison  feared  that  it  would  be  sectional.  Chancellor 
Kent  predicted  that  it  would  be  over  a  Presidential  election.  The  fears 
of  Madison  and  the  prediction  of  Kent  were  verified  in  1860. 

26 


When  the  Constitution  was  formed  in  1789,  slavery  existed  in  all  the 
States,  as  has  been  already  said,  and  was  incorporated  in  the  instru- 
ment as  distinctly  as  the  President,  Congress  or  the  Supreme  Court. 
The  right  to  withdraw  from  the  Union  was  as  fully  accepted  as  the  right 
to  accede  to  it.  It  took  those  political  "coopers,"  so  to  speak,  six  years 
of  wrangling,  crimination  and  recrimination  to  "set  up,"  so  to  speak, 
their  little  keg  of  thirteen  independent,  jealous  and  recalcitrant  staves ; 
and  but  for  danger  from  without,  it  seems  doubtful  whether,  with  all 
their  skill  and  patriotism,  they  would  ever  have  got  it  "set  up"  at  all, 
and  humanly  speaking  they  certainly  would  not  if  slavery,  ipsissimis 
verbis,  and  secession  tacitly,  had  not  been  "headed  up"  in  it.  The  pre- 
natal political  history  of  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  for  twenty  cen- 
turies, from  the  forests  of  Germany  to  the  forests  of  the  Atlantic  coast 
of  the  New  World,  justified  and  necessitated  their  theory  of  secession  as 
indispensable  for  the  preservation  of  their  strongest  instinct,  the  right 
of  local  self-government.  The  facts  of  the  case  should  estop  crimination 
and  recrimination  about  African  slavery.  The  right  to  enslave  men,  to 
buy,  breed,  and  sell  them  had  been  as  unquestioned  from  the  beginning 
of  historic  time  as  the  right  to  enslave  and  domesticate  wild  animals, 
to  buy,  breed  and  sell  them.  The  English,  the  Dutch  and  especially  the 
people  of  New  England,  were  responsible  for  the  presence  of  African 
slavery  in  America,  as  they  owned  all  the  ships,  the  people  of  the 
South  never  having  owned  a  ship  engaged  in  the  slave  trade.  The  people 
of  New  England  were  responsible  for  importing  slaves  from  Africa,  for 
breeding,  buying  and  selling  slaves,  for  turning  them  into  gold  when 
they  became  unprofitable  in  their  section.  The  people  of  the  South, 
though  innocent  of  the  slave  trade  on  the  high  seas,  shared  the  responsi- 
bility with  the  New  Englanders  of  owning,  breeding,  buying  and  selling 
them.  But  the  cotton  gin  was  more  responsible  than  any  other  agency 
whatever  for  the  conditions  in  1860  by  having  made  slavery  profitable 
and  sectional ;  and  so,  to  return  to  the  figure  of  the  coopers  and  the  keg, 
the  political  coopers  of  1789  headed  up  two  charges  of  dynamite  in  their 
little-  thirteen-stave  keg,  with  little  else  in  it  as  yet,  and  with  hoops 
barely  strong  enough  to  keep  it  from  falling  to  pieces.  But  by  degrees 
the  keg  expanded  into  a  barrel,  and  the  barrel  into  the  hogshead,  so  to 
speak,  with  contents  of  inestimable  value.  During  these  eventful  years, 
the  conscience  of  the  world  had  been  awakened  on  the  subject  of  human 
slavery.  France  had  freed  her  slaves  and  had  paid  for  them.  England 
had  freed  her  slaves  and  had  paid  for  them.  New  England  had  sold 
hers  and  had  pocketed  the  money.  The  Abolition  party  was  gaining 
strength  steadily  at  the  North  with  the  avowed  purpose,  not  of  paying 
for  the  slaves  whom  their  fathers  had  imported  and  sold,  as  England  and 
France  had  paid  for  theirs,  nor  of  sending  them  back  to  Africa,  whence 
their  fathers  had  brought  them  forcibly,  but  of  freeing  them  without 
paying  for  them,  thereby  abrogating  the  Constitution  and  committing  the 
greatest  piece  of  highway  robbery  in  history.  Even  Russia  had  freed 
her  serfs,  and  the  company  in  which  the  people  of  the  South  found  them- 
selves as  slaveholders  was  the  Spanish  peoples  of  South  America,  the 
Turks  in  Europe  and  Asia,  and  the  slave-hunting  tribes  of  Africa.  But 
the  Southern  leaders  claimed  slaveholding  as  one  of  the  rights  distinctly 

27 


guaranteed  by  the  Constitution,  so  highly  esteemed  in  the  South  and 
never  nullified  in  a  single  particular,  but  very  lightly  esteemed  in  the 
North  and  often  nullified,  and  they  could  not  see  or  would  not  see  that 
all  this  EVOLUTION  meant  REVOLUTION;  for  a  blow  striking  the 
dynamite  of  slavery  must  of  necessity  explode  the  dynamite  of  secession 
and  slavery  at  the  same  time.  When  the  explosion  occurred,  it  blew 
one  of  the  heads  out  of  the  "hogshead,"  so  to  speak,  and  greatly  endan- 
gered its  now  invaluable  contents ;  and  whatever  the  theory  of  secession 
and  States'  rights  might  be,  and  however  non-constitutional,  extra  con- 
stitutional or  unconstitutional  the  means  used  might  be,  the  disruption  of 
the  United  States  Government  could  not  be  permitted,  if  a  strong  and 
highly  organized  commercial,  manufacturing  and  industrial  majority, 
with  everything  to  fight  with  themselves,  with  everywhere  to  get  mate- 
rial, money  and  men  from,  and  with  absolute  command  of  the  sea,  could 
prevent  a  weak,  unorganized,  agricultural  minority  from  disrupting  it, 
who  had  practically  nothing  to  fight  with  themselves,  who  had  nowhere 
to  get  material,  a  dollar  or  a  man  from,  and  who  had  not  a  ship  to  de- 
fend their  2,500  miles  of  seacoast  from  Norfolk,  Va.,  to  Brownsville, 
Texas,  though  sea  power  is  decisive  in  wars  involving  maritime  peoples. 
The  time  had  come  for  the  conditions  to  change  and  it  is  worth  our 
while  to  note  that  there  are  many  other  historic  instances  of  an  entire 
change  of  opinion  and  action  about  things  once  deemed  eminent  and  dom- 
inant when  the  time  came  for  the  change.  Our  ancestors  were  firm  be- 
lievers in  the  .influence  of  the  stars  over  human  life  and  destiny,  as  is 
shown  in  such  words  as  jovial,  mercurial,  and  saturnine,  meaning  origi- 
nally, born  under  the  influence  of  Jupiter,  Mercury  or  Saturn.  Disas- 
trous, an  ill-starred  expedition,  born  under  a  lucky  star,  and  the  expres- 
sion, "you  may  thank  your  stars"  in  such  universal  use,  all  indicate  the 
once  dominance  of  astrology,  to  which  the  world  has  now  ceased  to  give 
credence.  The  entire  change  in  the  minds  of  men  as  to  witchcraft,  re- 
ligious persecution  and  duelling,  all  so  dominant  once,  and  each  with  its 
holocaust  of  victims,  illustrates  the  same  thing.  Belief  in  the  right  of 
secession  was  eminent  and  dominant  in  1789.  The  maintenance  of  this 
belief  in  1S60  was  as  much  a  thing  of  the  past  as  the  belief  in  astrol- 
ogy, witchcraft,  religious  persecution  or  duelling,  once  so  dominant. 
"The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new ; 
And  God  fulfills  Himself  in  many  ways 
Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world." 

Looking  backward,  we  must  be  filled  with  wonder  that  the  secession 
of  the  Southern  from  the  Northern  States  should  ever  have  been  at- 
tempted at  all ;  but  the  Southern  leaders  could  not  or  would  not  see  that 
it  was  a  case  of  Shakespeare's  "Very  Midsummer  Madness,"  for  a  weak, 
unorganized,  agricultural  minority,  without  money,  without  credit,  with- 
out arms,  without  ships,  with  scarcely  a  machine  south  of  Richmond, 
without  the  skilled  labor  to  produce  any  of  these  indispensable  appli- 
ances of  war,  to  undertake  to  fight  a  strong,  highly  organized,  manu- 
facturing and  industrial  majority,  supplied  with  all  the  appliances  of 
war  themselves ;  able  to  command  war  material  and  men  from  the 
whole  world,  and  with  absolute  command  of  the  sea  which  washed  2,500 
miles  of  the  minority's  coast  line. 

28 


Nor  could  the  Southern  leaders  see  that  the  North's  fighting  for  a 
strengthened  unity  was  business-like  and  logical,  and  that  the  South's 
fighting  for  a  unity  on  the  basis  of  disunity  at  will  afterwards  was  un- 
businesslike and  illogical.  It  was  like  moving  heaven  and  earth  to  es- 
tablish a  marriage,  with  the  right  of  divorce  attached,  at  the  will,  or 
even  at  the  whim,  of  either  party  afterwards. 

With  the  prevision  of  political  genius,  Calhoun  foresaw  it  all  and 
warned  the  South  of  its  danger.  But  he  was  regarded  as  a  political  Cas- 
sandra. With  the  prevision  of  military  genius,  General  Lee  saw  it  all, 
freed  his  slaves  and  urged  all  the  slave  owners  to  free  theirs  and  arm 
them  for  their  protection.  But  he  was  a  military  Cassandra,  and  in- 
stead of  the  South's  taking  the  initiative  and  breaking  the  backbone  of 
the  opposition  at  home  and  securing  intervention  abroad,  to  which  slave- 
holding  was  the  only  bar,  the  foredoomed  emancipation  of  the  slave  was 
left  to  the  enemy,  a  nascent  nation  was  brought  to  the  birth  without 
strength  to  bring  forth,  and  a  radiant  but  unstable  civilization  was  swept 
away. 

The  obligations  of  the  Nation  to  the  South  are  very  great.  It  was 
Thomas  Jefferson  who  wrote  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  which 
ranks  with  the  Magna  Charta  and  the  Bill  of  Rights  as  one  of  the  three 
greatest  and  most  fai'-reaching  state  papers  among  men.  It  was  George 
Washington  who  established  that  independence.  It  was  James  Madison, 
who,  as  the  constructive  thinker,  did  more  than  all  others  to  create  the 
Constitution  and  to  secure  its  ratification.  It  was  John  Marshall,  that 
prince  of  jurists,  who  as  Chief  Justice  for  thirty  years,  developed  the 
relations  of  the  Executive,  Legislative  and  Judicial  branches  of  the  gov- 
ernment. 

John  Fiske,  New  England  historian  and  Harvard  professor,  says  that 
these  four,  Jefferson,  Washington,  Madison,  Marshall  with  Alexander 
Hamilton,  "are  distinguished  above  all  others,  and  in  an  especial  sense 
they  deserve  to  be  called  the  founders  of  the  American  Union."  Hamil- 
ton was  foreign  born  and  bred.    The  other  four  were  Virginians. 

Of  the  fifteen  Presidents  from  1789  to  1861,  eight  were  from  the 
South,  and  a  ninth,  William  Henry  Harrison,  was  born  and  educated  in 
Virginia. 

During  the  seventy-two  years  between  1789  and  1861,  Southern  Presi- 
dents occupied  the  excutive  chair  forty-eight  years,  or  two-thirds  of  the 
time,  and  five  of  them  were  re-elected.  Northern  Presidents  occupied  it 
but  twenty-four  years,  one-third  of  the  time,  and  no  one  of  them  was 
re-elected. 

It  was  Thomas  Jefferson,  of  Virginia,  who  inaugurated  the  Southern 
Democratic  policy  of  expansion  and  added  the  Mississippi  Valley  to  our, 
at  that  time,  narrow  and  most  vulnerable  domain.  And  perhaps  the 
most  singular  thing  in  the  history  of  America  since  the  landing  of 
Columbus  is  the  determinel  effort  of  New  England  to  keep  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi  River  in  the  hands  of  a  foreign  and  hostile  power  by 
bitter  opposition  to  the  Louisiana  purchase.  It  was  James  K.  Polk,  of 
Tennessee,  who  added  Texas  and  the  Pacific  Slope  to  our  domain ;  and, 
in  pursuance  of  this  Southern  Democratic  policy  of  expansion,  during 
the  incumbency  of  President  Johnson  of  Tennessee,  Alaska  was  added ; 

29 


aud  as  Jefferson  gave  us  our  oceanic  river  and  Polk  made  us  an  interoceanic 
power  with  the  most  impregnable  continental  position  among  men,  the 
possession  of  Alaska  and  the  Aleutian  Islands  gives  us  control  of  the 
North  Pacific,  while  the  possession  of  the  Panama  Canal  Zone  makes  an 
attack  on  our  Pacific  Coast  practically  impossible  except  by  the  English, 
if  we  are  wise  enough  to  prepare  for  war  in  time  of  peace.  As  in  peace, 
so  in  war,  the  record  of  Southern  men  has  been  conspicuous.  Washing- 
ton won  the  War  of  Secession  from  England.  In  the  War  of  1812,  the 
successful  fighting  on  land  was  done  by  Scott  and  Harrison,  of  Virginia, 
and  Jackson,  of  Tennessee.  The  Mexican  War  was  won  by  Scott,  of  Vir- 
ginia, and  Taylor,  of  Kentucky,  ably  seconded  by  younger  officers,  mostly 
from  the  South,  among  whom  R.  E.  Lee,  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  T.  J.  Jack- 
son, and  G.  T.  Beauregard  were  the  most  conspicuous.  Military  critics 
the  world  over  recognize  the  superior  generalship  of  Southern  command- 
ers and  the  superior  fighting  of  the  Southern  rank  and  file.  In  the  Civil 
War,  the  victors  themselves  proclaim  this  to  the  world  in  having  erected 
to  the  vanquished  the  most  stupendous  monument  ever  erected,  since 
time  began,  by  man  to  any  men  or  to  any  cause.  It  is  their  pension  roll, 
which  after  more  than  forty  years  numbers  more  of  the  disabled  than  the 
Confederates  had  in  the  field  from  Bethel  to  Appomattox.  This  most 
magnificent  tribute  to  the  vanquished  is  already  THREE  BILLION  dol- 
lars high,  is  growing  ONE  HUNDRED  and  FORTY  MILLION  DOL- 
LARS higher  every  year,  and  will  be  at  length  SIX  BILLION  dollars 
high  before  the  men  who  "saAred  the  Union"  from  patriotism  get  pay  for 
their  patriotism  in  money. 

The  end  was  bitter  to  the  vanquished ;  but  these  bitter  pangs  were 
the  birth  pangs  of  the  NEW  SOUTH,  which  is  already  richer  and  more 
powerful  than  the  old  South  could  ever  have  been.  Having  surrendered 
in  good  faith,  the  men  of  the  South  betook  themselves  to  the  repairing 
of  the  wreck  and  ruin  around  them.  Being  of  the  purest  Anglo-Saxon 
blood  now  left  on  earth  and  having  their  intense  instinct  of  local  self- 
government  stimulated  to  the  utmost,  in  order  to  preserve  their  civiliza- 
tion, they  recovered  what  they  had  lost  in  the  imminent,  deadly  breach, 
and  a  government  of  white  men,  by  white  men  and  primarily  for  white 
men,  the  only  suitable  and  possible  government  for  any  other  men  among 
us,  has  been  established.  But  in  the  agony  of  preserving  their  civiliza- 
tion, when  for  the  first  time  since  time  began  a  white  race  undertook  to 
put  the  feet  of  a  colored  race  on  the  necks  of  men  and  women  of  their 
own  blood  and  breed,  the  men  of  the  South  took  no  thought  for  National 
Politics,  from  which,  nolentes  volentes,  they  were  rigidly  excluded  by 
the  sectionalism  of  the  Northern  people,  always  one  of  their  most  marked 
characteristics. 

As  long  as  the  South  had  her  legitimate  share  in  national  politics, 
American  statesmen  were  pure  and  patriotic,  American  politics  were 
clean,  graft  was  practically  unknown,  and  the  government  was  a  gov- 
ernment OF  the  people,  BY  the  people  and  FOR  the  people. 

But  since  the  people  of  the  Southern  States  have  been  excluded  from 
all  share  in  National  politics,  the  Great  Republic  of  the  west  has  drifted 
away  more  and  more  from  the  basic  principles  of  local  self-government. 
By  tariff  legislation   for   the  Classes   and   pension   legislation   for   the 

30 


Masses  (from  which  the  South  has  been  mercifully  delivered),  the  fal- 
lacy that  the  government  must  support  the  people  has  been  enthroned 
and  the  sound  Democratic  doctrine  of  the  fathers  of  the  republic  that  the 
people  must  support  the  government  has  been  dethroned ;  and  instead 
of  a  democracy,  the  United  States  Government,  as  administered  by  lead- 
ers from  the  Northern  States  since  1865,  has  become  a  pronounced  plu- 
tocracy, in  which  a  few  men,  protected  by  legislation  in  their  own  inter- 
ests, have  heaped  up  fortunes  in  comparison  with  which  Croesus  and 
Crassus  were  paupers.  Moreover,  this  dangerous  tendency  is  fostered  in 
the  Northern  States  by  the  fact  that  with  the  very  large  infusion  of  for- 
eign blood,  the  intense  instinct  of  local  self-government  has  been  large!} 
bred  out.  In  the  central  west  one  inhabitant  in  every  five  is  of  foreign 
birth.  In  the  South  as  a  whole,  only  one  in  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
is  of  foreign  birth ;  and  so  with  the  phenomenal  increase  of  wealth  and 
luxury,  which  in  all  ages  has  been  accompanied  by  a  decline  of  civic  vir- 
tue and  righteousness,  a  government  OF  the  plutocrat,  BY  the  pluto- 
crat, and  FOR  the  plutocrat  has  displaced  a  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people  and  for  the  people,  and  graft  stalks  rampant. 

Of  all  the  changes  since  1861,  this  is  perhaps  the  most  notable,  and  it 
is  the  most  malign  and  the  most  ominous. 

The  people  of  the  Southern  States  fought  a  terrific  war,  not  for  slav- 
ery, not  for  secession,  but  for  the  right  of  local  self-government,  and 
this  intensest  instinct  of  the  man  of  Anglo-Saxon  blood  and  breed  is 
more  emphasized  and  intensified  in  the  South  today  than  anywhere  else 
where  God's  sun  shines.  In  the  face  of  the  fearful  compression,  suppres- 
sion, repression,  depression  and  OPPRESSION  of  the  reconstruction 
period,  in  the  face  of  the  hostile  army  kept  on  a  war  footing  for  years 
after  1865,  in  the  face  of  a  hostile  North  outnumbering  the  South  five  to 
one,  in  the  face  of  the  enfranchised  negroes  at  home,  instigated  by  hos- 
tile carpet-baggers,  in  the  face  of  the  South's  abject  poverty  at  the  end 
of  the  war,  every  State  in  the  South  has  regained  its  local  autonomy ; 
the  cotton  crop  has  been  quadrupled  and  the  Southern  States  have  en- 
tered upon  a  period  of  financial  and  industrial  wealth,  expansion  and 
power  inconceivable  in  1860  and  never  before  attained  by  any  conquered 
people  in  so  short  a  time. 

The  sword  has  decided  necessarily  and  finally  against  the  right  of 
secession  as  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  conceived  it,  as  both  sec- 
tions of  the  Union  understood  it,  and  as  the  United  States  Government 
taught  it  at  West  Point  and  practiced  it  six  times.  But  the  right  of 
REVOLUTION  will  always  be  claimed  and  will  always  be  exercised  by 
men  of  Anglo-Saxon  blood  when  oppression  forces  them  into  revolution. 
Southern  men  created  the  Nation  at  first.  And  when  the  time  comes  for 
the  plutocrats  and  the  autocratic  bosses  to  be  dethroned,  and  for  a  gov- 
ernment of  the  people,  by  the  people  and  for  the  people  to  be  en- 
throned again,  as  come  it  must,  unless  the  American  Republic  is  to  go 
the  way  of  all  the  republics  of  the  past,  the  conservative  men  of  both 
sections,  who  esteem  patriotism  above  greed,  and  democracy  above  plu- 
tocracy, will  work  cordially  together  again,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  heart 
to  heart,  hand  to  hand  as  of  yore;  but  the  lion-like  leaders  of  this  ref- 
ormation, if  it  can  be  a  reformation,  and  of  this  REVOLUTION,  if  it 

31 


must  be  a  REVOLUTION,  must  come  largely  from  the  South  again,  as 
in  the  days  of  Washington,  Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe  and  Marshall, 
who  made  the  Nation  at  first ;  for  it  is  in  the  South  where  the  lion-like 
leaders  of  local  self-government  have  been  born,  bred  and  nourished,  and 
where  the  conditions  since  1865  have  kept  them  in  the  most  strenuous 
training.  And  then  the  sceptre  will  return  to  the  South  again,  and  the 
law-giver  will  be  between  our  feet  again  as  of  yore;  for  all  things  come 
to  those  who  wait  and  who  keep  pure  and  grow  strong  while  they  wait. 

"But  new  occasions  teach  new  duties. 

Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth  ; 
They  must  onward  still,  and  upward, 

Who  would  keep  abreast  of  truth. 
Lo,  before  us  lies  the  future, 

In  it  let  us  motors  be ; 
But  we  ne'er  must  try  that  Future's  Portal 

With  any  weak,  dishonored  key." 


:;2 


